Steele in the Shadows
by Madeleine Gilbert
Summary: S5; Steele Inseparable series, Pt. 4. When Roselli surfaces in Los Angeles and harms Laura, the Steeles must deal with Remington's impulse towards retaliation.
1. Chapter 1

STEELE INSEPARABLE PART IV: Steele in the Shadows

AUTHOR: Madeleine Gilbert

SYNOPSIS: S5 continuation; fourth in a series. When Roselli threatens Laura, the Steeles must struggle with Remington's impulse towards retaliation.

SEQUEL TO: Part I, "Steele in Perspective'; Part II, "Steele-In-Law"; Part III, "Ancestral Steele"

DISCLAIMER: This story is not for profit and is purely for entertainment purposes. The author does not own the rights to these characters and is not now, nor ever has been, affiliated in any way with _Remington Steele_, _Lou Grant_, _WKRP in Cincinnati_, their producers, actors and their agents, MTM productions, the NBC television network, the CBS television network or with any station or network carrying the show in syndication.

AUTHOR'S NOTE: One of the reason I preferred _Remington Steele_ to its precursors (_Hart to Hart_) or imitators was that it avoided "Laura-in-peril" stories. It's a convention that I've always hated in "couples" series, especially when it results in the male half experiencing a moment of truth at the hospital bedside of his injured mate or colleague. Somehow, it would've cheapened it for me if Remington and Laura had reached an understanding about their relationship through such an overused—and, frankly, lame--dramatic device.

So, despite what the synopsis above seems to suggest, this isn't that kind of story.

Instead, it's a look at how Laura's independence and Remington's desire to protect her might clash when she's endangered. We saw glimpses of that side of him in the series. How would marriage change that? And how would he react if Roselli were the threat?

In my estimation, here's how it would play out.

Finally: San Sebastian Park and WNTL-AM "NewsTalk L.A." don't exist, as far as I know. _The Los Angeles Tribune_ is a fictitious newspaper created by the writers of the MTM series _Lou Grant. _

As always, additional characters from outside the RS canon, apart from historic personages, are fictional and created by the author. Any resemblance to any persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental. Exceptions are the mentions of Art Donovan and Andy Travis, characters created by MTM for the series _Lou Grant_ and _WKRP in Cincinnati_, respectively.

* * *

"He's gonna leave this town wishing he and that wife of his had never been born".

Orson Welles as Hank Quinlan, _A Touch of Evil_**, **1958

Chapter 1

On an early September evening in Los Angeles, it was the moment, imperceptible yet definite, when the last light of dusk gives way to the violet shadows of twilight.

At that moment two dark silhouettes detached themselves from the deeper darkness of the belt of oak, cypress and scrub pine that ran along a private road in the hills north of Hollywood. With one accord, they headed towards the chain link fence that separated the woods from the pavement.

One of the silhouettes was tall and lean, the other shorter by a head or more, slender and shapely. But there was a similarity about them that went beyond the black both wore. It was in the fluidity and economy with which they moved and in their speed. Though the man's stride was longer—the taller figure was masculine—the woman had no trouble keeping pace with him. An onlooker would have noted that she was usually a step or two in the lead.

Side by side they reached the fence, leaped for the top and scrambled up. Here the woman was a split second behind her companion. It was only because her jump couldn't achieve quite the same height as his. She climbed just as confidently, went over just as nimbly, as he, without waiting for him to lend her a hand. Nor did he stop to offer one.

Knees bent to cushion the impact, they landed together on the other side. There they crouched low and scanned their surroundings. A grassy declivity separated them from the road. Across the road, past another ditch, lay a second, narrower thicket of oak and eucalyptus. Beyond it was their destination, a secluded estate.

But they would have to cross that strip of open ground to reach it.

When they did, it revealed the advantage she had over him: she could run like the wind. It seemed his long legs were no match for her fleetness. Or were they? Even after they were over the other ditch and into the oaks and eucalyptus, where they slowed to a brisk walk, the man never overtook the woman. The truth was, his lagging behind was due not to any weakness on his part but by choice. He had been shielding his partner unobtrusively since they'd left the shelter of the woods.

At the far edge of the oak grove, Laura Steele hunkered down next to her husband. The narrow beam of a penlight illuminated the face of his wristwatch, the second hand of which he was watching intently. Before them was the wall that guarded the rear of Jürgen Eitschl's property. In their initial reconnoiter last week—she disguised as the driver of a commercial laundry truck, collecting the household's wash, he as the delivery man—Remington had honed in on this area as the soft spot in the estate's defenses. From here, timed correctly, he could temporarily disable the alarm system. It was also a short distance away from an unoccupied wing of the house, the perfect access point for them.

The moment had arrived. "Now," he whispered soundlessly and extinguished the penlight before slipping from her side.

The alarm system's metal housing was embedded in the wall a couple of yards to their right. Impossible for a casual passerby to recognize or locate it. Yet he'd found it with no problem the other day, already thoroughly familiar with its mechanics, strengths and weaknesses. It had been a long time, years, since she'd asked him to explain the steps he would take to neutralize a particular alarm, or even given it a second thought. He would pull it off. Didn't he always? Laura smiled to herself. Some women's husbands followed baseball; some hunted or fished; others restored cars. Hers kept abreast of the latest developments in security apparatus and amused himself by plotting ways to circumvent them.

The flash of the penlight told her that he'd reached his destination. In her mind's eye she pictured him, the light clamped between his teeth, leaving his gloved hands free. Once they'd exposed the wiring, they would travel as rapidly over it as if choreographed, those skilful hands of his. The way they moved over her body when he was making love to her? Considering the question, she felt a delicious tingle. No, of course not. There would be nothing sensual in his actions right now; he had never been one those thieves who derived an almost orgasmic thrill from their own daring. The work was exactly that: work. _She_ was his love.

As he would undoubtedly show her later at home.

Another involuntary shiver coursed through her. She had to admit, she'd been struggling to suppress the pull of desire for him from the moment they'd begun to get ready for tonight. She couldn't quite put a finger on the reason. Most likely it was the sight of him in the black turtleneck and trousers that were his standard uniform for clandestine work. Hadn't it been a spur to her imagination since the very first time he'd invited her along on a job? The Carnover Museum, the theft of _The Five Nudes of Cairo_. An intoxicating brew, that night had been, composed of pushing her physical capabilities, testing the sharpness of her wits, purposely courting danger—and him. The most important element of all. His quiet confidence as he'd completed one stage of his plan and proceeded to the next. His blue eyes resting on her, warm with amusement and approval. The play of his lean muscles when he'd strung the line that would carry them over the floor sensors, propelled himself along it, then turned to catch her and set her down, holding her to him for the extra seconds that allowed her to run her hands over his shoulders, to mold her body against his. It couldn't have been more effective as foreplay than if they'd been reclining on the floor in front of his fireplace with the whole night ahead of them.

Foreplay. Wasn't it what the previous four years boiled down to, really? And hadn't the work been an integral part of the mix? Working together day in and day out had taught them to operate physically as two halves of a whole. It was in the work that they'd developed their non-verbal communication, the brief touches and glances that linked them when words couldn't. No wonder that when they'd finally made love, they were in such amazing synch from almost the beginning. They'd been unconsciously rehearsing the steps of that dance for a long, long time.

A brilliant observation. She'd make sure to store it in her memory so she could share it with him. Safer in the meantime not to indulge in reverie that involved the bedroom. They couldn't afford that sort of distraction--or any other, for that matter. Not now, when success hinged on both of them maintaining clear minds and cool heads.

Sooner than she'd foreseen, he was back. In the darkness he slid a hand under her braid to caress the nape of her neck, totally out of character for him while the most complicated phase of the operation still lay ahead of them. An intuitive response to her wanting him? She threw him a quizzical glance. It was more difficult to see him, since he had cut the electrical flow to the security lights this side of the house. But she could've sworn she caught a gleam of something odd in his eyes. Ridiculous to think it might be trepidation. In any case, the look was gone before she could confirm her impression. Instead his other hand went to the left pocket of her black jumpsuit to pat the cold steel secreted there.

Ordinarily they carried the agency gun only as an extreme defensive measure, or in the face of a definite threat. Even on high-risk incursions like this one, they preferred to rely on their wits to extricate them danger. But two months of steady work on the Demerest & Associates' case had led them to scrap their original theory that three independent brokers were sabotaging the firm. The brokers' activities were only an offshoot a much bigger conspiracy, a ring of international financiers who were trying to undermine key American businesses by destabilizing their stock. A murderous group, as events had proven. They had already done away with one of the original targets of the Steeles' investigation, Paul Kozemchak, in an apparent "accident" while driving through the Canyon. Tonight, when the Steeles were breaching the home ground of the ringleader, Jürgen Eitschl, the gun seemed not only a sensible precaution, but a necessary one. And in the division of responsibilities for executing their plan, handling the gun naturally came down on Laura's side. Remington had never had any problem acknowledging that she was the better shot in pressure situations.

She put her hand over his. "Safe and sound, Mr. Steele," she whispered.

In response he lightly kneaded her nape again and then released her. "Onwards, Mrs. Steele."

Once over the wall, they threaded their way through a series of terraced gardens until they reached level ground. Their goal was a kind of enclosed porch, a room with a flat roof from which they could gain entry to a second floor window. Nearby was the added bonus of a sycamore with a sturdy trunk and branches. Even the lowest foothold was too high for Laura to reach on her own, so Remington bent over and locked together the fingers of both hands, his palms forming a stirrup she could step into for an upward boost. Aloft, she was as agile and sure-footed as a cat, her childhood aptitude for climbing trees standing her in good stead. He came close behind, equally fearless, equally cat-like.

At length he let out a low whistle. She halted and glanced down at him. He had arrived at what he calculated to be the nearest they could get to the roof, which nonetheless left a gap of several feet between it and the tree. Already he was stretching up for the branch above him, preparing to swing. No need for words between them: the instinctive understanding borne of years of partnership told her he was going over first, where he would be in position to help her negotiate the gap. Sound and logical. Even if she hadn't thought so, she would've obeyed his directions. She always deferred to his greater experience, as well as his judgment, in circumstances like these.

From there it was almost ridiculously easy. Jim Demerest had sketched a layout of the house, with which he was familiar, and Remington had committed it to memory. They were making their way to the ground floor, towards a combination library and conference room in which Eitschl's safe was concealed. Tricky, it might have been, to enter it unnoticed, for it opened onto the wide central hall. But Remington had avoided the main staircase, choosing as an alternative a back stairway that led to the butler's pantry. On the same side of the hall as the library: minimal exposure for them. And he had planned the job to take advantage of the fact that the house was supposed to be empty for the evening, except for the live-in help, a staff of three. Laura had to hand it to him. Five years of relative prosperity and respectability hadn't dulled his attention to such crucial details.

By the glow of his flashlight they were able to pick out the floor-to-ceiling cabinetry of the butler's pantry, a restaurant-sized walk-in refrigerator and a screened door. On the latter he focused the light for a longer interval before directing it upward at his face. It illuminated his sideways nod. A possible exit, he was telling her in their wordless shorthand. He'd already indicated a couple of others, a precaution in case they had to flee in a hurry, or, God forbid, they were separated before they could make their escape.

He killed the light and cracked the door a few inches. They stood for a few moments in breath-held silence, ears straining for the slightest noise from the house around them. Nothing. At length the gentle pressure of his hand at the small of her back signaled her to exit ahead of him. Hugging the wall, they slipped smoothly to the library, and were inside.

Finding the safe ate up more time than he'd allotted for it, she could tell. Little signs betrayed his frustration, the narrowed eyes, his tongue caught beneath his front teeth. But his fingertips exploring walls and bookshelves and furniture were as systematic and sensitive as always. And when he finally discovered the mechanism—a cupboard disguised by wainscoting, the latch part of its wooden trim—his grin sparkled like a mischievous boy's.

Laura had swiftly unfastened the waist pack he was wearing beneath his black windbreaker and extracted the papers it contained. Protected between two sheets of cardboard were the records of the stock transactions that Eitschl's organization had placed though Demerest & Associates by means of its plants, Paul Kozemchak and Nehri Dhillon, along with a corresponding confirmation that showed in what form the transactions actually went through on the trade floor. The originals, of course, were in safekeeping at the agency. So was the identity of their informant. Terrified by Kozemchak's murder, Adrian Mihalec had turned over the evidence of the transaction orders he'd altered at the New York Stock Exchange on Eitschl's instructions. It wasn't enough proof to put Eitschl away--not yet, anyway. But it was the first step in the Steeles' plan to obtain that proof. If all went as they hoped, Remington Steele Investigations would have cracked the kind of breakthrough case that could raise their profile to heights they'd only dreamed about up to now. National recognition. Security retainers from wealthy, influential companies. Even the _People_ magazine cover Remington had so coveted in the spring.

It was a heady thought, one that had the power to throw her completely off her game if she dwelt on it too long. She forced herself to focus on her husband. The combination detected, he had opened the safe and was turning to her for the paperwork. "Ironic, isn't it?" he whispered as she handed it over. "Ten years it took to build my reputation as a master safecracker. Now here I am, risking life and limb, not to take something out, but to put something in."

"And maybe catching the bad guys in the process. A fitting recompense for your misspent youth, wouldn't you say? Not to mention another chance to use your talents for good instead of evil?"

An irritated, sidelong glance was the only reply she got.

She pressed closer to him so that she could supervise his disposition of the papers. "They have to look natural, like they've been in there all along. Otherwise Eitschl will smell a set-up." When he had stirred them into a different configuration and glanced down for her approval, she shook her head. "Worse." Another attempt; she reacted with an exasperated sigh and another head shake.

The frown between his brows told her she'd tried his patience too far. He stepped aside and motioned for her to take his place. "By all means, have at it."

Finally they were done. Sharp-eyed, they surveyed the room, ensuring they'd left nothing out of place. He strapped on the waist pack. Across to the door they sprinted, where he held it open for her and followed right on her heels.

They never made the butler's pantry.

But almost. For Laura had just taken hold of the doorknob when there came from behind them the sound of another door opening: the front entrance.

The hall chandelier blazed into life, pinning the Steeles beneath its glitter. Nothing but their eyes moved as they exchanged a glance.

A voice in German-accented English: "Turn around slowly. Hands where I can see them, _bitte_."

Profound relief that neither of the men who loomed across from them was Eitschl. Momentary, though, that relief, banished by the snub-nosed pistol aimed directly at Remington's heart.

The gaze of the unarmed man swept Laura from head to foot, returned and lingered. A lazy grin turned up the corners of his mouth. Remarking it, she kept her own face impassive. Here it was, a potential opening she and Remington could exploit. She hoped he'd realized the implications, too. If ever they needed to be on the same page in terms of strategy, it was now.

"Weapons?" said the one with the gun. "Check them. Him first."

His companion seemed to take inordinate pleasure in buffeting Remington about while he searched his clothing. The waist pack he ripped open, folded inside out and cast to the floor. "_Nichts_," he said.

He turned to Laura.

It came to her in a flash what her next move should be, as soon as he leered at her again and ran his hand slowly down her arm. The same stupid ploy men of his stripe always used, with minor and unremarkable variations: expecting to reduce her to quivering jelly by mean of an implicit sexual threat. The lack of creativity would have been laughable, if it weren't for his partner's firepower. She made a big show of shrinking away, wide-eyed and scared, the way she might have done were she not a trained professional. In reality, she was watching him covertly, alert for a break in which to retrieve the gun from her left pocket…

Suddenly he was rocked backwards, yanked off balance by Remington's grasp on his shoulders. Remington with matter-of-fact politeness said, "I'd appreciate it, old chap, if you'd take your hands off my wife."

An elbow thrown at Remington's mid-section, doubling him over, and the man had twisted free; he grabbed her arm roughly, jerked her towards him. Off balance in her turn, she stumbled and went down on one knee.

Remington's snarl came from between bared teeth as he leapt for the man, spun him around: "_Keep your hands off my wife, you son of a bitch._"And he drove his fist into the other's abdomen.

So much for her strategy. She could've smacked her forehead in dismay at the magnitude of his blunder, but controlled the impulse. It was act now or not at all, draw the gun, remove the safety and jump to her feet in one swift motion, hoping that the gunman's attention was on the fight and not on her.

Luck was with them. He was shouting something, hurtling past her to his companion's rescue. No wonder, for Remington was smashing away at the other man with single-minded ferocity. His opponent was getting his licks in, too—she could hear the solid thump as they made contact—but her husband, lighter on his feet, weaving and dodging, was oblivious. From the expression on his face she concluded that he would happily continue until he'd killed the guy, never mind the cut welling blood above his left eyebrow, the pain she knew was throbbing in his right hand.

All the time the man with the pistol was maneuvering around them indecisively. Trying to get a clear shot, or not too comfortable in handling a gun? Not that it mattered. Light glinted on the barrel as he raised it, sighted along it.

She sprang forward, a swift running step, with a well-aimed kick at the back of his knees that toppled him. His hands spread to break his fall and the gun skittered across the floor. She dove along its trajectory, snatched it up, and was on her feet again. A gun in either hand, she braced herself, shouted, "Hold it right there."

Extremely gratifying to witness, their instant compliance. Still more gratifying, despite her annoyance with him, was the open admiration on her husband's face as he released his opponent, who was much worse for the wear than he.

Without removing her gaze from their captives, she passed him the pistol to him, butt first. "You okay?" he asked. His breath was still coming in hard gasps.

"Fine. You?"

"Great. I suggest we neutralize these gentlemen as quickly as possible, before the homeowner arrives and we find ourselves back in the same predicament."

Eitschl's guards—or whoever they were—had shifted uneasily at the word 'neutralize'. Laura contemplated them. "Got any ideas? There's no time to look for rope, and we certainly can't take them with us."

A beat while he considered it, frowning, the cut on his forehead lending him a slightly raffish air. "Think fast," she added.

The lift of his eyebrow told her when inspiration had struck. So did the glance he threw over his shoulder at the door to the butler's pantry.

The silent give-and-take that had failed between them so abysmally a few minutes earlier was back in operation, it seemed. She didn't need his explanation to guess what he had in mind.

They considered the two men again with an identical gleam in their eyes; when they spoke, it was in unison.

"Strip," said the Steeles.

* * *

"What the hell were you thinking back there?" Laura demanded.

True to form, she was venting her pent-up displeasure by speeding eastward on Santa Monica Boulevard as fast as she could manage. Regaining enough calm to speak had eaten up the first ten minutes of the drive. In the Rabbit's passenger seat, Remington gazed out the window, holding a blood-stained tissue to his forehead, lost in thought. Either that or he was keeping quiet in the hope that her bad mood would subside if he did nothing further to annoy her.

Even though they'd wrapped up the caper without a hitch—the guards divested of their clothing and locked in the walk-in refrigerator, their own escape uneventful—she wasn't willing to let him off so easily. "That wasn't a rhetorical question."

" 'Back there' is such a vague term. Could you be a little more specific?"

"Oh, don't be obtuse. You know perfectly well I'm talking about those men. What the hell were you thinking?"

With a sigh he lowered the tissue and examined the crimson smear on it. "I don't recall thinking anything."

"Well, you should've been! How's this for starters? 'I wonder what Laura's got up her sleeve? I wonder how we can work together to get out of this?' But no! Instead you go off half cocked, emotion clouding your judgment, to hell with acting as a team!"

"Really, Laura. Now I'm supposed to be able to read your mind?"

"Why not? You used to be able to. And not so long ago, either. Las Hadas? Norman Keyes? Ring any bells, Mr. Steele?"

"The only ringing I hear right now is in my ears." He tossed the crumpled tissue out the window.

"And whose fault is that?"

"From the tone of your voice I presume you think it's mine."

"Damn right I do! Jumping that guy. Picking a fight. 'Get your hands off my wife'. Care to explain that one?"

"I wouldn't have thought it needed explaining. You're my wife. He had his hands on you. I wanted them off. I asked him nicely; he declined to oblige. I changed his mind for him. End of story."

"I could've handled him, Remington, and you know it. You didn't have to rush to my rescue. It was foolhardy, it was stupid, it was reckless, it was--"

"You're missing the salient point, aren't you?"

She glanced at him, tight-lipped.

"It worked. Here we are, objective accomplished, safe and sound." He raised a hand and regarded its knuckles, which had split and bled from the force of the punches he'd thrown. "Relatively speaking."

"Barely. By the skin of our teeth, no thanks to you. If we hadn't had the gun with us--"

"—One or the other of us would've found some way to disarm them. Which, in fact, you did, impressively, while I had them otherwise occupied. You don't call that teamwork?"

"You're still not getting it. I wouldn't have had to, if you'd waited five seconds for me to draw _our_ gun."

They wrangled back and forth for the rest of the ride to Windsor Square. There, by virtue of necessity, they called a temporary halt to the hostilities. While she proceeded up to their bedroom to trade her jumpsuit for pajamas and to gather the items she would need to patch him up, he remained downstairs to lock up—just one of the domestic habits he'd begun gradually to acquire since they'd taken residence in late July.

A week and ten days after he'd returned from London, to be exact. Their trip to claim the inheritance he'd received from Daniel and its near-catastrophic aftermath, when she had left him in Menton. Privately she was convinced it was why the move to the house in Windsor Square had held an extra significance for her. It almost hadn't happened. Totally her fault, as she was too well aware. In her drive to persuade him to take the name John Chalmers—his grandfather's name, Daniel's final request of his son—she'd made some decisions that might have ended their marriage. For a few horribly painful days, she'd feared that it _was_ over, that she'd lost him. Thank heaven he'd had the good sense to ignore her when she'd forbidden him to come back to Los Angeles as Remington Steele. What it amounted to was that he'd done for her what he always claimed she did for him: he'd saved her from herself. An unexpected turnabout, as well as humbling, but one she accepted with gratitude nevertheless.

They'd emerged from the turmoil intact. Still, it had revealed a truth she probably should've been smart enough to recognize on her own. Remington Steele was no longer a name she could bestow and withdraw at will. It was bound inextricably to the identity of the man she'd married, not just his public persona, but his private self. He'd sealed his claim the instant he'd voluntarily renounced his Chalmers birthright for it. That, too, was something she'd had to accept. Not entirely easy, since her belief that he'd made the wrong choice was as strong as ever. It was for the same reasons she'd argued in Menton, anxiety over what would happen to him should someone unearth Steele's true origins, the desire to see him openly acknowledged by and connected to the talented Chalmers family. But she kept it to herself. She wanted him more than she wanted to win this round. If that meant relinquishing control to him, so be it.

Meanwhile the erstwhile rootless wanderer was embracing life in the house left him by Patsy Vance with his accustomed zest. That side of him wasn't so surprising to her anymore. What did surprise her were the pangs of regret she'd suffered at leaving Rossmore. Though moving day hadn't hit her quite as hard as the destruction of her first home three years ago, it was hard enough. But just as he had three years ago, Remington summoned the right words to put it in perspective for her.

He'd quietly come up behind her where she was lingering just inside the living room and enfolded her in his arms. The apartment was empty, the last of their belongings in transit across the few miles that separated Hancock Park and Windsor Square. All that remained was for them to lock up and drop the key at the realtor's. "It's not an ending for us," he'd said, his lips close to her ear. "We're merely resuming in a new setting, the very thing you're so good at. Don't tell me you can't imagine the possibilities."

She'd managed a laugh—a little shaky, but a laugh all the same. "Of course I can…Xenos."

"Of course you can." He'd turned her to him and searched her eyes. "It crept up on you unawares, didn't it? Thinking of this place as home.''

"If you'd predicted four months ago I'd feel so…nostalgic…about leaving here, I would've clobbered you. It _is_ home. Although I'm wondering if the attraction isn't the place so much as the person I've been sharing it with. Pretty corny, huh?" And she'd wrinkled her nose, self-deprecating.

"Not at all. My thoughts exactly, in fact." Lifting her chin, he'd kissed her gently. "Ready when you are, my love."

Her eyes had traveled the apartment in a silent farewell. It was here more than anywhere else that the illusion of Remington Steele had taken on substance over the years, until it had fully assumed the flesh and blood of the man now holding her in his arms. Every room had played a part in the transformation. The living room hearth and sofa where they'd lain so many evenings, lost in each other; the terrace that had been the scene of dinner parties and cocktails and hours of confidential conversation. The dining room and the countless gourmet feasts with which he'd wooed her. The bedroom door they'd finally had the courage to open, and the durable union they'd forged once inside…

Before emotion could get away from her she'd drawn in a deep breath, met his steady blue gaze and nodded. "Ready."

"Off we go, then." He'd taken her hand, releasing it only as long as it took for him to turn the key in the outer lock. Hand in hand, they'd departed Rossmore for the last time.

Too bad the memory of his sweetness and understanding lacked the power to dispel her present annoyance with him. It didn't help that when he entered the room, he acted as if their argument was over, if not resolved. "A letter from Robbie and Kate, Laura. Have a look." He waved an envelope in her direction.

One of the happier consequences of their London trip was the long-distance friendship he was building with two of the cousins they'd met there, Archie and Robbie Dalgleish. Their mother, Daniel's older sister Lillian, was another story; she'd responded to Remington's advent in the Chalmers family with quiet hatred---a hatred he'd heartily reciprocated as soon as he'd uncovered her part in his mother's flight to Ireland when he was a baby. So far it looked like her sons either weren't privy to what had happened between Lillian and Remington, or it didn't matter to them. Robbie had re-established contact within two weeks of the Steeles' return to Los Angeles, and there were plans in the offing for another London visit around Christmastime.

If he'd hoped to mollify her by bringing the letter upstairs, he was disappointed. "Later. Come over here and take off your shirt."

"How is it you manage to make those words so unappealing?" He was eying her warily as he approached.

With the shirt discarded and tossed onto a chair, he perched on the edge of the bed. The first order of business was the cut on his forehead, so she tilted his face towards the light and set to work. In her irritation it was possible that she applied the antibiotic ointment with a shade more firmness than was called for.

"Ouch!" He ducked away. "Laura, please."

"What's the matter? Your macho swagger deserting you?"

"I thought the point of first aid was to soothe my aches and pains, not make them worse."

When she tried to resume with the ointment, he evaded her. "Hold still, you big baby, and stop whining," she snapped. "You really are a lousy patient."

"On the contrary. I'm a splendid patient, uncomplaining and grateful. You don't realize it because you're such a mercurial nurse. I never know what version I'm going to get. Which is it this time, eh? The angel of mercy, dispensing kisses as well as bandages? The stern taskmaster, scolding me for taking foolhardy risks while grudgingly tending my wounds? Or the detective, absent-mindedly inquiring after my welfare before leaving me in Mildred's hands--or, worse, to fend for myself?" He looked her up and down. "No need to answer. I can see it's the taskmaster."

She was pressing a bandage over the cut. "It's no picnic for me, you know, watching you get hurt. You always seem to forget that little fact. Especially when it's totally unnecessary, like tonight."

"There's where we differ. To my mind it was totally necessary."

"I can take care of myself, Remington. I've been doing it for years."

"I never intimated that you couldn't."

"Well, it sure seemed that way." Taking up a washcloth, she began to bathe the knuckles of his right hand. "Do have any idea how insulting it was, having you jump that guy? Like I'm an incompetent, helpless female, incapable of doing my job! It's almost as bad as calling me 'the little woman'."

"The thought that you're helpless or incapable never entered my mind, I assure you."

"Then why'd you do it?"

"Merely looking out for you. My prerogative as your husband and partner, if I'm not mistaken. Isn't that the general idea? Neither of us going it entirely alone anymore?" He gave her his left hand.

"Then it wasn't a knee-jerk Neanderthal attempt to shield me like I'm some delicate flower?"

"Laura. In all the years we've been together, can you honestly remember a situation where I've treated you like a delicate flower?"

Head on one side, she considered the question. "Now that you mention it…no."

"And I'm not about to start now." His gazed turned thoughtful. "Eitschl's was new territory for us, somehow. I think I just realized it."

"What do you mean? We've pulled hundreds of jobs like that."

"Yes, but this is the first since we've been married. It felt…different…out there with you tonight."

"I don't follow you."

"I'm not sure I understand it myself." He fell silent in a search for words to express what he was feeling, then shook his head, giving up. "Never mind. Anyway…perhaps we ought to consider giving each other the benefit of the doubt. I'll try and remember you're perfectly capable of handling the bad guys without any interference from me…you remember that I've always considered you the most resourceful, competent, intuitive investigator I've ever seen. Fair enough?"

"I can live with it if you can."

"Well, then." He caught her hand and bent to press his lips to her palm.

His caress recalled her to her earlier desire for him; she reached out with the other hand to run her fingers through his hair. "I have to say, even though it fell apart at the end through no fault of ours, your plan was just about perfect. Brilliantly conceived, flawlessly executed."

"Good to know I still have what it takes to impress you." Twinkling up at her, he drew her to him for a kiss.

But before it had gone on very long, she pulled away and smiled into his eyes. "Bengay rubdown, Mr. Steele?"

"No one but you could make the prospect so inviting," he breathed.

When she had turned down the covers and he had stretched out on his stomach, clad only in briefs, she knelt beside him. Privately she thought her massage technique was nowhere near as good as his; his old flame, Felicia, hadn't been kidding years ago when she'd praised his mastery of the Tibetan method. Then again, he had never complained about her expertise, or lack of it. In fact, his usual response to her touch was a combination of contented sighs and hums of pleasure.

Exactly the kind he was evincing now. She focused her attention on the task before her, putting her heart into it. That was easy. His body remained a marvel to her, the long, lean limbs, the contours and bulk of his muscles, the dark curling hair, the sheer masculine beauty of him. The most beautiful man she'd ever seen. And he was all hers.

Even so, the contrast between her earlier expectations and this more prosaic reality evoked amusement in her. The Bengay, she thought, was the perfect symbol. "This isn't quite the evening I had in mind for us."

"Oh? What did you have in mind?

"Oh…you know."

"Tell me."

"Why don't you tell me? You're so much better at that sort of thing than I am."

He smiled. "Still a bit shy about it, are we?"

"It doesn't come naturally, let's put it that way."

"That's because you haven't had the practice. But I detect a latent talent lurking beneath the surface, waiting to be unleashed. After all, Laura, you've quite a vivid imagination--when you're willing to use it."

"Thanks," she said dryly. "All the same, I think I prefer showing you to telling you."

"Role reversal? Deeds before words? I knew it was only a matter of time before I'd bring you round to my way of thinking."

"Far be it from me to resist the power of your influence."

There were a few minutes of silence while she continued to massage Bengay into his shoulders and biceps. "I'm all ears, Mr. Steele."

"Let me see…Ah, yes. I think I know what you're driving at." His words took on the storytelling cadence he reserved for moments such as these. Irish music, she liked to call it. "We arrive home from Eitschl's in a celebratory mood. A successful break-in...our goals achieved…what better reason could there be? Besides, we've been on the same wavelength the entire evening, wanting each other, feeling the anticipation build…"

So she was right earlier when she guessed that he'd sensed her desire for him. She smiled to herself.

"Which means it's not an evening where we linger long on the subtleties of romance—"

" 'The subtleties of romance'?"

"Foreplay, of course. We'd already had it, you see. Our working together. It's always something of a duet, isn't it, the way we seem to read each other's thoughts, anticipate each other's responses, match each other's actions..."

"Funny. I was thinking exactly the same thing."

"Were you?" Drowsiness was insinuating itself into his voice.

"Mm. In fact, my theory is that's what the first four-and-a-half years of our relationship were really about."

"Intriguing." He yawned. "Tell me more."

"It makes sense, when you think about it. It's everything you said. The dance and learning the steps to it. It was always leading to the bedroom. It just took us longer than most couples to get there."

"Mm-hm."

"But when we did get there…we knew so much about each other already, it couldn't help but be fantastic. And it's only gotten better."

No response.

"Wouldn't you agree?"

Silence.

"Mr. Steele?"

"Yes, yes…I'm listening…listening…" Anything else he might have said trailed off into a long sigh.

She leaned forward to get a good look at him, though long acquaintance told her he was probably down for the night. Sure enough, his eyes were closed and his face had the expression it always wore in slumber: trusting, unguarded, ineffably boyish.

So much for her fantasies of hot kisses and everything that would naturally follow.

Her mouth curved in a smile, half rueful, half indulgent, as she slid off the bed. The sheet and blanket were folded back at its foot; she pulled them up and over him. Then she bent to kiss his cheek.

"Sweet dreams, my love," she whispered.

BE CONTINUED


	2. Chapter 2

Chapter 2

From the bathroom where she was putting the last touches to her makeup, Laura heard the click of the snooze alarm coming on.

Her reflection in the mirror grinned saucily, waiting for the scenario to unfold the same way it did every morning at seven o'clock. Her ingenious strategy for shocking her husband awake, since, if left to his own devices, he would rarely rise before ten.

First, the voices of the morning DJ team, Tyler and Austin, whose lame humor passed at KROT-AM for witty repartee. Or, alternatively, KROT's idea of music. She kind of liked it—at least it didn't offend her sensibilities-- but Remington hated it with an outspoken, passionate hatred.

Next, the sound of the flat of a hand landing smack on top of the clock radio to cut off the noise.

Right on schedule. Her grin widened.

What should have followed was the repertoire with which he habitually greeted daybreak, a range that consisted of anything from muffled groans of protest to muttered curses and put-upon sighs. Normally these wouldn't have cost her a moment's anxiety; she'd learned long ago that he was a reluctant morning person, at best. She'd never paid much heed when she was exposed to it in the old days, figuring that coddling would only encourage him. Marriage had inured her to it completely.

But when she heard him give a sharp yelp, the makeup implements dropped from her hand. "Remington--?"

Thanks to the bedroom's abundance of windows, she didn't need to open the curtains to see that he was easing himself gingerly into a sitting position, his face twisted in pain. "Damn," he grunted.

"Let me take a look." She settled on the edge of the bed with no idea that the grimace she was wearing was a twin of his.

She switched on the lamp and drew back the sheet. The bruises inflicted on him in last night's altercation were revealed in all their dubious glory. Shading from red to black-purple, they were peppered across his chest and shoulders and about his midsection. She probed one experimentally. "Does that hurt?"

He winced. "Only when you do that."

"That guy hit you a lot harder than I thought he did."

"Mere love taps, compared with what I dished out to him." His breathing was becoming less ragged.

"That goes without saying. Ice pack, Mr. Steele?"

"No need. Just stiffness from sleeping the wrong way. Moving around ought to help. In fact--" a suggestive grin lit his face "--I can think of a move or two that would be particularly therapeutic." Taking her unawares, he pulled her down to lie in his arms.

"Miraculous recovery?" she suggested, laughing up at him.

"A testimony to the excellent nursing I've received at your hands."

"Which must mean I'm an angel of mercy after all."

He understood the reference from last night perfectly and twinkled back at her. "Not quite. You haven't kissed me yet."

"A situation easily rectified. Come here."

Bending over her, he complied. At length his hand began to travel slowly down her bare thigh. "Is this what you're wearing to work?" he murmured against her lips.

"Attire appropriate for my cover. What's a jogger without running shorts? Or a Walkman?"

"The same thing as a photographer without a camera, I'd imagine—easy to identify as an undercover detective."

"You capture Eitschl and Mihalec on film, I get them on tape. As ingenious as the plan you thought up to nab Thorpe and Keever, back in the day." She nudged him. "Let me up."

He watched while she collected her purse and packed up her briefcase. "We're following the script we outlined to Mihalec? Separate cars, separate arrival times?"

"Right. It'll be easier if I scope out the park first. I'll call you from the Rabbit as soon I get there. Assuming Mihalec can maneuver Eitschl into position, you should have a clear shot of them."

"You've got to admire Mihalec. It takes a certain amount of intestinal fortitude to expose an organization as far-reaching as Eitschl's."

"More like self-preservation. He knows if he doesn't, the SEC'll put him away for a long time for his shenanigans on the trade floor," she said dryly as she crossed to him again. "Don't forget, if you call Fred before you take your shower, he'll be here by the time you're done drying your hair." She leaned over and kissed him, then made as if to straighten.

But Remington captured the end of her high pony tail and tugged on it gently so that her face was on a level with his again. Instead of the kiss she was expecting, he gazed at her with a seriousness she hadn't expected. "Be careful today."

Eyebrows lifted in surprise, she kissed him again. "You, too, Mr. Steele."

It wasn't until she was halfway to the park that she remembered that the agency gun was still in her purse.

Keeping the gun at home had been a point of contention between them ever since they'd moved to Windsor Square. Remington adamantly refused to have it in the house when they weren't there, not even under lock and key, despite the state-of-the-art alarm system he'd had installed. "A thief breaking in and making off with our valuables in one thing," he'd said. "A gun is something else again. We're not taking a chance on arming one more member of Los Angeles' thug population, Laura."

There was no budging him from so staunch a conviction, which was why she'd transferred the gun to her purse after last night's raid on Eitschl's safe. And right now she was stuck with no options for its disposal. She couldn't very well take it with her while she jogged; stowing it in the Rabbit's glove box was an even worse example of pushing their luck than leaving it at home. The only choice was to double back to Century City and drop it at the office.

So intent was she on getting back on the road that she didn't notice the light under the door to her office at first. When she did, she was halfway across the reception area, conscious of nothing out of the ordinary, presuming Mildred had overlooked it on her way out yesterday afternoon.

The sight of a tall, broad-shouldered form at the drawer of one of her filing cabinets disabused her of the idea even as it froze her in the center of the room.

Only for a second, but already too late to retreat. The intruder had whirled on her, was…greeting her by name. "Laura Steele. How's it goin'?"

It was the man she and Remington had known as Tony Roselli.

Instantaneously her gaze swept her office, reviewing its contents. Stacks of file folders on the floor. Atop one of the cabinets lay a heavy duty flashlight. Nothing else out of place. Roselli himself, clad in a dark uniform of some sort, eyes framed by wire-rimmed aviators, his hair closely cropped. His easy stance belied the fact that he was watching her narrowly, a snake before a rabbit hole.

Still, the ploy was worth a try. She cut her eyes left and feinted towards the door to Remington's office, then broke to the right and the door through which she'd entered.

Useless. He wasn't as fast as Remington, but fast enough for a man his size, and what he lacked in speed he made up in power. He used it to drag her backwards, twisting her left arm behind her, bending his right arm so that his elbow was over her throat. "Not bad," he said. She could've sworn it was amusement she heard from him. "You really are a pro. Course I saw you use that move in Dublin, so I knew it was coming. Those were some good times, weren't they, Dublin?"

But when she took a breath to reply, the arm at her throat jerked a warning. "I wouldn't scream if I was you, because then I'd have to kill you. You're such a little thing, it'd be easy. I could snap your neck like a twig." And he slowly flexed his right hand once, twice, as if to underline his point.

Drawing on all her years of training and experience, she blocked out his voice. Don't get sucked in, she commanded herself, don't be stung by the insult or intimidated by the threat. She concentrated on remaining pliable in his grip, unresisting: an effective ruse for lulling an assailant into relaxing his guard.

It worked; she acted. Dropped swiftly into a crouch, was out of his arms. The next moves would be automatic. Bob upright, the tight, controlled pivot, smash the heel of her hand upward against his nose. The sharp elbows driven into his mid-section, the knee to the groin. They were instinctual, had been for years, the physical skills she'd learned, the ones that had leveled the playing field for her against the bad guys, so that she could not only defend herself against attack, but take the offensive when necessary. Along with the superb physical condition she maintained and her resourcefulness and ingenuity, these were the ways she'd compensated over the years for the natural disadvantages she faced as a woman competing in a man's world. They'd worked like a charm yesterday. No reason to worry that they would fail her this time…

Thunder crashed, reverberating. In the fraction of a second it took her to realize that it wasn't an external sound at all, but from inside her head, a flare of white light stole her vision. The light was succeeded by a wave of blackness, rushing towards her, thick and cold. She was falling into it, falling, frightened down to her very bones of it, but there was nothing she could do to stop herself, even though she reached out in a futile search for something to break her descent.

Just before she hit the bottom of the dark place she feared, it seemed someone called her name. Remington? she thought. But then the fall was over, and she was immobilized, alone in the void. And in it was no seeing or hearing, thinking or feeling, at all.

TO BE CONTINUED


	3. Chapter 3

Chapter 3

By the time Fred arrived to pick him up, Remington had called the Rabbit's mobile phone five times in search of Laura.

Called her, and never reached her.

He was waiting on the front walk and had wrenched open the rear door before the limo had come to a complete stop. "San Sebastian Park, Fred, and let's not linger long at the lights."

In the back seat he stabbed her number again and again into the limo phone, stretching it out to fifteen, twenty rings before hanging up and starting over. An exercise in futility, he feared, the physical equivalent of grasping at straws. Deep in his gut the certainty had already taken root that she wouldn't pick up…because she couldn't.

He couldn't have explained why he knew. But he was as certain of it as he was that he loved her.

Home number, office number. Nothing but answering machines. The Rabbit, again and again and again and yet again, the faint hope that he might yet hear the click of the connection, her 'Mr. Steele?', dying a little more after each failure.

He kept trying. If she could hear the persistent ringing…if she were in any shape to recognize it for what it was…perhaps it would tell her that he'd guessed there was trouble, that he was on his way, that he was depending on her to hold on until he could get to her…

Fred was eying his reflection in the rearview mirror. "Everything all right, Mr. Steele?"

"Laura's not answering her phone," he replied and dialed the office again. Tersely he relayed his message to the machine. "Mildred, Steele here. Ring me in the limo as soon as you get this. If you hear from Laura or see her, have her ring me. And stay by the phone, okay?"

As he replaced the receiver, it shrilled beneath his hand. He snatched it up. "Laura?"

"Mr. Steele?" The tentative voice, a man's, was one he couldn't immediately place. "It's Adrian Michalec."

The park, the meeting with Eitschl, the surveillance operation: apprehension had wiped it out of his head. "Adrian. At the park already? I'll be there shortly."

"Jürgen just called. The meeting's off."

Unsettling news. It was a struggle to process it and sort through the implications on top of everything else. "Did he give a reason?"

"Someone broke into his house last night. They didn't take anything, he said, but until the police catch whoever it was, it's too risky for us to meet."

"Where are you now?"

"A pay phone at a gas station."

"Don't go back to the motel right away. Make a few stops, run some errands, in case he has people watching you."

"Will do." There was a moment's hesitation on the other end of the line. "Mr. Steele? You'll…still be able to catch him, won't you?"

"Not to worry, Adrian. Consider this is a momentary setback. In the meanwhile, keep your head down. We'll be in touch."

Mihalec's relief was audible as he said his farewells and rang off. Good, for it meant that he would continue to trust them enough to cooperate in whatever plan they came up with next. What a disaster it would have been, their most credible witness panicked into hiding, or worse, into betraying their plans to Eitschl. He, Remington, had succeeded in suppressing every note of personal anxiety from his side of the conversation and convinced the man that all was well.

A shame that he couldn't summon up a similar conviction for himself.

He knew her through and through. That was the problem. He could count on the fingers of one hand the number of occasions through the years when Laura hadn't been where she ought to be at the moment she intended to be there. His Laura--the steady, the reliable, the one person by whose schedule he could've set his watch--would never have missed the rendezvous by her own choice.

Pointless, then, any attempt to dismiss his uneasiness as unwarranted, or to look for comforting rationalizations to explain her silence.

At San Sebastian Park Fred slowly circled the parking lot while Remington scanned the cars it contained. Two circuits accomplished, and it was clear to them both that Laura wasn't there.

He leaned back in the seat and tried to marshal his scattered thoughts. The elementary steps to tracking a missing person, what were they? For a moment he drew a blank. Then from those long ago lessons in the art of investigation spoke Laura's voice. Start with the most obvious places and work forward. Who saw the subject last? Where would he or she be most likely to go? That's where you'll find your answers.

"The agency," he directed Fred, "and remember, a yellow light's your signal to floor it, mate."

The first sight to meet his eyes when they pulled in at 2049 Century Plaza was the Rabbit, parked in the visitors' lot close to the building.

A passing glance to make sure she wasn't inside the car, and he was pounding across the lobby, shoving into a packed elevator. Every stop made him grind his teeth in ever-increasing frustration. When the doors opened at last on the eleventh floor, he fought his way out, oblivious to the nasty glances and comments that followed in his wake, and raced for the office.

Mildred, hanging her wrap on the coat rack, turned a startled face to him as he burst through the main entrance. "Where's Laura?" he demanded.

"I don't know, Chief, I just got here--!"

He didn't reply, never broke his stride. His office door was closed; he banged through, no Laura, crossed to her door. Throwing it open, he saw file drawers gaping at random, a litter of paper on the floor, and his wife curled in a motionless heap in front of her desk.

"Oh, my _God_--!" He sprang across to her and knelt to turn her on her back, clearing away the disordered hair that screened her face. It was ashen and her eyes were closed. No response to his panicked, "Laura? Baby--?" No response to his hand patting her cheek.

He had a dim awareness of Mildred beside him, her horrified gasp and her voice babbling something. But she wasn't getting through. His faculties were in the grip of a hideous possibility that left his mouth dry and his hands like blocks of wood.

It also made him clumsy as he fumbled for the pulse in Laura's neck.

His fingertips registered…nothing.

His own pulse began to drum wildly. He was choking on terror, battered by a rush of memories. The door of her loft standing wide open, unheard of for her at that hour of the night. The burst and reverberation of a gunshot. The shooter squeezing off a second shot at him before charging out the door. Laura's crumpled body; the blackened hole the bullet had seared through the blazer she was wearing. The conviction fixed in his mind before he even touched her that she was gone. The handful of moments after that, which would've told him how much he loved her, if he hadn't already made that discovery on a construction beam high above the ground behind the Federal Reserve Bank…

Ah, but there had also been the miraculous moment when she'd awakened in his arms, unharmed. And sometimes miracles repeated themselves. Didn't they?

They did. When he bent to listen at her chest, there was the steady thump he'd half-anticipated he wouldn't hear. For a second he lingered just to make sure he hadn't imagined it. Relief surged through him, restoring his senses to full capacity; he found he could tune Mildred in. "Chief? Chief! She's not--" she was saying.

"She's not, thank heaven," he said, and looked Laura over more closely, trying to find a clue to any injuries. No visible wounds, broken bones or blood. Had she fainted? Tripped and hit her head? His distracted gaze went around the room, really noticing its disorder for the first time. Had the office been ransacked? Perhaps she had surprised someone, and they had used chloroform on her, or a hypo of something, or—

It was Mildred shaking his shoulder that brought him back to himself. "Chief, it can't be good for her, lying there like that. The couch in your office--let's move her in there."

"Yes, yes, good thought. Thank you, Mildred." She leaned down as if to help him, but he waved her away. The days when he couldn't pick Laura up unassisted were long gone. No doubt it was all the practice he'd been getting lately. Probably he could thank the adrenaline pumping through his bloodstream, too.

Mildred had conjured a blanket up from elsewhere in the office, and he spread it over his wife as soon as he'd set her down on the sofa. On his knees again, he took both her hands in his and rubbed them, eyes fixed on her, as if he could somehow will her to be all right by not once looking away, by directing a constant flow of words to her: "Come on, Laura. Come on, baby. Come on…"

He barely glanced up when Mildred reappeared with a washcloth she'd soaked in cold water and wrung out. This he pressed to Laura's temples and forehead. "Come on, come on…"

It took a few minutes of this before she began to come around. At length her face twisted and she opened cloudy eyes, squinting at him to bring him into focus. "It _was _you calling me," she said.

She could see and hear and talk; she knew who he was. Gratitude would have sunk him to his knees if he weren't already there. "Are you all right, are you okay?"

"Fine. I'm fine." She laid a hand along his cheek and he covered it with one of his. Soon her eyes were clearing and the vagueness was leaving her face. Before he could stop her, she was struggling to sit up.

And cried out, "Ow! My head!"

He caught her as she slumped backward and lowered her to the sofa again. Another thrill of fear went through him when she let him do it without resisting, when she was quiet, eyes closed. He grabbed her hand again. "Laura?"

"Roselli," she replied, squeezing back.

He exchanged a glance with Mildred. "What about him?"

"In there. He hit me…"

"_What_?" He turned her head and probed lightly until he found the lump. She winced at the contact and he pulled his hand back, unaware that his face had tightened in an answering grimace. "No wonder you've a headache. Quite a nasty crack on the skull, he's given you," he said, his voice unsteady. He let her go and sat back on his heels, suddenly trembling with rage. Roselli! In their office, bold-faced, brazen, as if he owned the place! And Laura, despite her razor-sharp instincts no match for Roselli's superior size and strength--Remington's imagination balked at supplying the final unspeakable image, but still, he closed his hands into fists, breathing heavily.

"That tears it! Mildred exclaimed. "I'm calling the police."

"Mildred--" Laura tried to sit up again, but changed her mind and subsided back on the cushions.

It took a monumental effort, but Remington forced himself to relax and concentrate. "Hang on, Mildred. The most important thing is to get Laura to the hospital. We'll worry about the police later."

"You're not taking me to the emergency room," Laura said. Mutiny was written plainly on her face.

"Well, then, to the internist. Fellow over on Wilshire. Stiegmeyer, wasn't it? The one whose nurse was filching the--"

"Dr. Stiegmeyer? We hardly know him!"

"Laura, the man was our client for nearly three months."

"I don't know why I need to see a doctor at all. You never do when you get clonked on the head."

But he refused to be drawn into an argument, though he counted it a good sign that she was coherent enough to argue in the first place. "Don't think of it as your needing to see a doctor. Think of it as my needing peace of mind.

After a moment she relented. "For you. But remember, it's under protest."

"Duly noted," he said. "Mildred, get an appointment with Dr. Steigmeyer for as soon as possible. Bribe him if you have to."

"Tickets to the San Diego game?"

"My thought exactly." But as she turned to go, he called her back. "How do we go about getting the locks changed on all the doors?"

"Building administration. I'll call them."

His mind was operating on a more even keel, and his emotions had begun to follow suit. "Splendid. Laura, did you have your handbag with you this morning?"

"I don't--" Confusion showed in her eyes. "I must have, but I don't know where it is."

"I'll check." Mildred headed for the other office. In a moment she was back with Laura's purse.

"See if anything's missing," Remington said. "Mildred?"

"Wallet, keys, planner…Looks like everything's here."

"The gun," said Laura, clutching his wrist.

His eyes widened. "Mildred--"

"I'm on it, Chief."

While they waited for her to return, he smoothed Laura's hair. "You stopped here on the way to the park, did you? So you could drop off the gun?"

"I didn't know what else to do with it."

"And you found him in your office?"

"More like I surprised him in my office." She smiled wryly. "And then he surprised me."

No time for anything more: Mildred had re-entered the room. "_Nada_. And that file I put together on him? Sitting right smack dab in the middle of the floor, so we couldn't miss it."

"The pictures?" asked Remington.

She shook her head. "Along with every scrap of paper."

The Steele agency stared at each other as the full import sank in. Remington got up, his low voice breaking the silence. "Call the police. And let's see if we can sort out the chaos he left in there before they arrive."

"Better let me handle that." And with a briskness that caught him thoroughly off guard, Laura climbed to her feet, where she stood erect for a beat or two, tottered and grabbed for him.

He reacted instantly, sweeping her up and then sitting down with her in his lap. "Easy, easy, easy," he breathed. He couldn't have said whether he was talking to her or himself. The sight of her swaying, on the verge of collapse, had shattered his newly regained calm; he wasn't the slightest bit surprised to find he was shaking.

She didn't seem to notice it. "Would you please stop babying me? We've got work to do." Incredible: she was trying to stand again. "I'm fine. I really am--"

"--Fine," he said flatly. "You may be, but I'm not. I've had one hell of a shock, as it happens. It isn't often that I stumble across my wife out cold amid the wreckage of our filing system. I'd appreciate a moment to assure myself the worst is over and I've got you safe. Okay?"

That got her attention. "Me, too," she whispered. Abandoning her protests, she softened herself against him and slid her arms around his neck. He bent his head so that he could press his cheek to hers.

They rocked together for a few minutes. With the imminent danger behind them, the reaction was setting in—for him, at least. And it was overwhelming. The contrast between this moment and what might have been, his earlier fear for her and his discovery that it was justified, the tight rein he'd had to maintain on his feelings so he could think clearly enough to find her: they'd each taken their toll. His nerves were flayed raw. What would have comforted him most was to crush her to him, cover her face with kisses and pour out reassurances that no one would ever harm her again, he'd see to it, he'd lay down his life to protect her.

But he didn't say or do any of those things. The weight of his history with Laura prevented him. He had learned years ago that she hated to be fussed over when she got roughed up in the course of the work. She preferred simply to pick herself up and get on with it. An expression of concern, a helping hand if she were unsteady on her feet, those were allowed. Any further, and she was liable either to bite his head off or consign him to arms length, depending on the day.

So he held her and stroked her hair and tried to stop shaking, and never realized that he was circumscribing his words and actions to fit the old, established pattern.

He said: "When I opened the door and saw you lying there, all I could think of was the night Carl shot you."

"It's over, sweetheart. I'm all right."

An unusual endearment for her to use, but he was too wrought up to remark it. "I've been going crazy, trying to reach you—and when you weren't at the park…"

"You came to find me, and now you're here, and I'm fine."

"You might not have been. My God, Laura, Roselli--he could've--" His voice was hoarse with emotion; he drew a long, ragged breath.

"--But he didn't."

"If he ever comes near you again…"

"Or if he comes near you. It might just as easily have been you in there."

There it was again, the insistence that the two of them were interchangeable. He really was beginning to dislike it. "And I suppose you think that's the same thing."

"What?"

"You think I'd have been in equal danger."

"I'm saying he hates us equally and would've gone after you, if that's what you mean."

"But you see no difference in the outcome--if I'd run into him, it would've been me lying there instead of you. Isn't that what you think?"

She let her arms fall to her sides. "Just what is it you're implying?"

"I'm not implying, I'm asking outright. You don't consider yourself more vulnerable than I under those circumstances, do you?"

"What's gotten into you? First last night and now this. You've seen me face down dozens of bad guys over the years, armed and unarmed. So I've taken my lumps. It's a hazard of the trade. So have you. It's what partners do, share and share alike."

"That's not the bloody point!" He gripped her by the shoulders and withdrew a little so he could look her in the eye. "It's not the same, it never has been, so let's stop pretending it is! Say that filthy bugger does come after me with mayhem in mind. Say he even ambushes me. Isn't there a fifty-fifty chance I'll be able to dish out as much as I get? He may have a few pounds on me, but I move better, so we're evenly matched. I've beaten him before. Whereas you…" Urgently he took her face in his hands. "Damn it, Laura, he can hurt you. He _has_ hurt you, without hesitating, apparently. Once, just once, forget your damned determination to prove yourself equal to a man in every respect, can't you? Admit he's bigger than you, and you couldn't handle him yourself!"

She heard him out, although the longer he spoke, the more deeply she frowned. "In case you haven't been watching, I handle myself very well. It's because I've learned ways over the years to compensate for the natural disadvantages I face as a woman competing in a man's world. One of them is to make up in resourcefulness and ingenuity for anything I lack in physical strength or size. In the detective business, it's not the size of the muscles--"

" '—that matters'," he said in unison with her, and continued the thread when she dropped it. " 'What's more important is training, sound instincts, flexibility and persistence'." He met her indignant gaze straight on. "You see? I know the speech by heart. I ought to. I've heard you give it often enough."

"Then why are we having this conversation?"

"Because this has nothing to do with the business or some idiotic notion of equality. This is a highly trained professional, possibly a killer, twice your size, who's decided he has a score to settle with us, who not two hours ago surprised you alone, and cracked your skull for you! Has anything I've said gotten through that hard head of yours?"

She opened her mouth to retort, then stopped and rubbed her temples. "If only my head _were_ as hard as you seem to think," she said. "Maybe it wouldn't hurt so much right now. And if I keep sitting up much longer I'm going to be sick."

He was immediately guilt-stricken. "Come here, come on. Come and lie down." And he shifted position so that she was reclining in his lap, her head pillowed on his arm.

"Better?" he asked.

"A little. The ringing in my ears is dying down, anyway."

"It's my fault. I shouldn't have shouted at you."

"I guess I had it coming after reading you the riot act last night. How does the old saying go? 'Turnabout's fair play'?"

"This is one lesson in role reversal I'd have been happy to skip, if it's all the same to you." For a moment he wavered, wondering how to pose his next question so as not to upset her. Then he realized how ridiculous his reservations were. This was Laura. No need to handle her with kid gloves. "Can you tell me what happened?"

"I think so." Her brow was knit, not in distress, but in that way she had when she was concentrating. "I came to drop off the gun, like I told you. There was plenty of time before--" She broke off with a gasp. "Mihalec!"

He tightened his arms around her before she could make a move. "The meeting's been postponed. Called off at the last minute by Eitschl himself. We'll talk about it later, okay? You arrived to drop off the gun, and then--?"

"The rest of the office was dark when I got here, but there was a light on in mine, so I went in to turn it off. And there he was, going through my filing cabinets."

"Which possibly explains the mystery of our missing files. Did he say anything?"

" 'Laura Steele.' Odd, come to think of it. All the time he was hanging around us in Mexico and London and Ireland I never remember him calling me that. I'm not sure what it means, if anything."

"And then what?"

"I tried to fake him out and run." She shrugged. "He moves a lot faster than I thought."

"He touched you?"

"Grabbed me from behind and held his arm across my throat. You know how I mean--with his elbow bent so he could choke off my windpipe if he had to. And he twisted my arm behind my back."

"And threatened you, if I know Antony."

"You can probably imagine what he said." Her tone was very dry. "The gist of it was how easy it would be to break my neck if I screamed because I'm such a 'little thing'. His words, not mine."

He could probably imagine it? Looking away from her, tugging at his ear, he took a few deep breaths. The scene was playing in his head in excruciating, too-vivid detail. It had already fueled an anger he was finding difficult to contain. To dwell on it too long would send him on a homicidal search for Roselli. Ironic, really: a few minutes ago, he'd been trying to cushion the effect talking about the attack might have on Laura, when all the time he should have been worrying about himself.

But his anger wouldn't do her much good right now. He turned back to her and made his voice as level as he could. "What else, Laura?"

"Nothing. He hit me. The next thing I knew, I was waking up in here. And you were holding my hand."

"Both of them, actually, at one point. I had a devil of a time getting you to wake up, my love. And you were in there, what? Almost an hour before I found you? An accurate indicator of how hard he must've hit you."

He felt a shudder go through her. "He's really not who we thought he was, is he?" she said.

"I suspect you and I never had the same notion of who Antony was. Is. But no, he isn't."

"Which means we can't predict what he'll do next." She was gazing up at him; in her dark eyes he glimpsed the shaken woman behind the cool, capable detective. "You were right, you know, what you said earlier. I couldn't handle him by myself. I did all the right things—made all the right moves—and I still couldn't. That doesn't happen to me very often."

He shook his head, mouthed, "No."

"If he'd wanted to kill me, I'd be dead now. I couldn't have stopped him, Remington."

It hung in the air between them, that truth. There were no soothing words he could offer to mitigate it. He bent forward to envelope her more closely in his arms, as if to shield her, and cupped a hand behind her head when she buried her face in his shirt.

They clung together without speaking until Mildred interrupted them, her voice preceding her as she bustled into the room. "Mr. Steele, Lieutenant Benjamin is--oh." At the sight of them embracing she halted. "Honey, are you all right?"

Ordinarily they sprang apart whenever she surprised them. This time, though, Remington only raised his head to look at her. "She's fine, Mildred. What's this about Lieutenant Benjamin?"

"He's here with a couple uniforms. I thought you'd want to see them right away."

"Any progress with Dr. Stiegmeyer?"

"He can see Mrs. Steele at eleven thirty."

Remington consulted his watch. Ten minutes after ten. "Excellent work. Just give us a few minutes to collect ourselves, eh?"

"You got it." And the door closed behind her.

Covertly wiping at her eyes, Laura slipped out of his arms. "Sure you're up to this?" he asked. "We can always talk to them later."

"Let's get it over with."

"There's my girl." On his feet he helped her into a sitting position, arranged the blanket over her and then brushed the rumpled hair back from her forehead and cheeks. "My lovely love," he said softly.

Her hand closed around his wrist; she curved the other behind his neck to draw him to her. He sank down on the edge of the sofa. The kiss was for mutual reassurance, and they gave themselves up to it, until she pulled back, squaring her shoulders and nodding at him. "All right," she said.

Briefly he rested his forehead against hers. "Okay." He smiled. "Back in a flash."

Under ordinary circumstances, Lieutenant Roy Benjamin was the least favorite of their allies in the LAPD; his obnoxiousness had earned him that dubious distinction once Detective Steve Zweigenhoff was sentenced to life in prison for the murders of Lance and Heather LeBlanc and Tony Petz. But today he was more than halfway bearable. He asked after Laura's welfare with genuine concern in his voice and led her gently, courteously, through the events of that morning and their previous association with Roselli.

The amount of detail she recalled was amazing for someone with a head injury. The agency's doors were locked with no evidence of tampering when she'd arrived. She'd spotted nothing out of place in the outer office that would have alerted her to the intruder. Roselli had apparently waited to wreak havoc on their paperwork until after he'd hit her, for she remembered neat stacks of folders on the floor. Remington noticed that she didn't mention the occasions when individual files had gone missing. Knowing Laura, the omission was deliberate, and he was careful not to volunteer any information to Benjamin.

About Roselli himself her memory was less certain. "He's cut his hair a lot shorter and he was wearing glasses. Wire rims, aviators. His clothes…" She frowned. "Dark pants and a jacket? But not the same jacket he wore in London and Ireland—or I don't think so." The frown more pronounced, she squeezed her eyes shut. Attempting to summon up a mental picture, Remington could tell. A moment went by before she shook her head. "Damn it!"

It was the first lapse in the admirable composure she'd maintained up to that point. Remington squeezed the cold hand he held in his. "Easy, Laura, easy. It'll come back."

There wasn't much more to ask or tell. Benjamin closed his notebook and slid it into an interior jacket pocket. "I think we got enough to go on for right now. Just give my guys a few more hours to go through the offices. I'll file the report on your gun as soon as I get back to the station." He stood. "Mrs. Steele, if you remember anything else, call me. And take care of yourself, huh? City's not so squeaky clean that we can afford to lose a pro like you."

Laura smiled faintly. "I will. Thanks."

"I'll walk you out, Lieutenant," said Remington.

In the outer office, Benjamin paused in the act of exiting through the double doors. "My next stop is security, then building administration, and then we'll start canvassing the other tenants, find out if anybody was around early enough to see or hear anything."

"No criticism of you or your men intended," Remington replied, "but I've seen Roselli in action a few times. He's a pro. A lousy detective, but a pro at hide and seek. It may be more difficult to find him than any of us think. Although--"

He hesitated, and Benjamin eyed him keenly. "Something on your mind?"

"The idea occurs that he's hanging about somewhere close by."

"That his pattern?"

Remington was remembering a ruined dinner party in Los Angeles, an unwanted third on a train to the Liverpool-to-Dublin ferry, an unseen watcher at a London restaurant. "Let's just say he has a disconcerting habit of turning up when we least expect him."

"Uh-huh. You wouldn't by any chance be angling for protection, would you?" A sarcastic note had slipped into the other man's voice, a reminder of past tensions between them, and Remington was instantly alert to it.

"Look, Lieutenant, I know Laura has been rather vehement in the past about her opposition to a police guard, but it was for the sake of maintaining the agency's image. This is different. She's been hurt, we don't know yet how badly, and I can't be with her round the clock if I'm to handle cases alone while she recuperates."

Benjamin recognized a truce when he heard one. "Don't mind me, I'm just yanking your chain a little. Sure, I can put a couple plainclothes guys on your place for a few days. I can't guarantee more than that."

"It's more than generous. Thank you."

After Benjamin had departed, Remington remained alone in the reception area. He was having serious misgivings about the request he'd just made. Part of him wanted to dash after the lieutenant, tell him that he'd changed his mind, that police protection wasn't a good idea, that they'd tough it out themselves. It was what Laura would have wanted. Likely she would demand it of him as soon as she got wind of the plan, if the past was any indication.

The Anthony DelGetti case, that was. A psychotic ex-Marine they'd put away and who'd tracked them down with murderous intent as soon as he was released from prison. Remington could still see the stubborn tilt of her chin as she refused Benjamin's offer to assign a guard to each member of the Steele agency. As stupidly macho as any man, he, Remington, had characterized her, in her determination to prove her ability to take care of herself. She'd only softened when her obduracy cost him a broken leg. But her second thoughts had had their limits. Though she'd requested an officer to watch him, she'd wouldn't hear his pleas that she do the same for herself, dismissing his concern for her as so much misplaced masculine patronage.

And look where that had landed her! Straight into the hands of another psychopath, a matricidal peeping tom who'd been stalking her for weeks. To this day Remington had bad dreams about the picture-taking little freak. Of course, in them he often enjoyed the pleasure that had been denied him in real life, getting his hands around the bugger's throat. He had to make do with the much less satisfying alternative of knowing that Donovan was locked up for life. And it had all come to pass because the feisty little baggage he loved was dead set against leaning on anybody, not even him.

Yes, but that was before they were married. Surely he was entitled now to a say in her welfare. After all, his stake in it was as large as hers. No: larger. While he would never express it in so many words, his entire happiness depended on her. He was willing to concede that there might be life for him without Laura. But it was bound to be a bitter, grim, torturous business. There was no chance he would risk losing her in a repetition of Roselli's violence.

He would far rather risk her anger.

He had promised her on his return from London that he was going to put his foot down in situations where he felt it was justified. Could there be any better justification than what had just happened? For a moment the image of her as he'd found her this morning rose before him, every detail limned in crystal clarity. Resolutely he thrust it away. Dead set against leaning on anyone or not, Laura was about to learn that hers wasn't the only vote that counted.

They'd keep the plainclothesmen around for as long as Benjamin was willing to send them. She would just have to live with it.

As he headed towards his office, back to her side, he wondered uneasily whether he might not say and do a lot of things Laura would have to live with before this was all over.

TO BE CONTINUED


	4. Chapter 4

Chapter 4

It came as no shock to the Steeles that Laura was suffering from a concussion, and that the recommended treatment was bed rest and pain relievers. "Frankly, I can't believe you're up and around at all, let alone walking and talking," said the internist who examined her. "You've got one hell of a constitution, Mrs. Steele."

"My husband would say I remind him of a Timex watch."

Dr. Stiegmeyer laughed. "Takes a licking and keeps on ticking?" he said to Remington.

Remington nodded, but his eyes were all for Laura. "Precisely."

Whatever the source was for her extraordinary stamina, she had exhausted it, and by the time he got her home she was in a bad way. It was plain as soon as he came around to the passenger side of the Rabbit that her balance was out of whack; she leaned against him so heavily for support that he caught her up and bore her straight to the sofa in the den.

In their bedroom he collected pillows and a blanket and more comfortable clothes for her to lounge in. It struck him as he did so that the more sensible alternative to carting the lot downstairs would've been simply to bring her upstairs. The problem was that he hadn't the slightest inclination to be sensible. He wanted her nearby, not only in case she needed him, not so that it was easier on him to rouse her at the requisite intervals, but for her living, breathing presence, asleep or awake. A little extreme, he supposed, as well as sentimental. But then the whole morning had been extreme. And he could be forgiven for indulging in a little sentiment, considering the wringer they'd just been through.

He helped her change, tucked her up on the sofa, repaired to the kitchen to cook up chicken consommé from scratch—a time-consuming job, but what else had he except time?—and kept an eye on the clock in order not to miss the next dose of her pills. At the prescribed hour he wakened her, relieved that it was relatively easy. Later he returned to administer soup and Tylenol. Subdued by pain and dizziness, she accepted them with no objection, and he was encouraged when she seemed better afterward.

As for him, he was gradually recovering his equilibrium. The mundane chores were doing him good. So was this unfamiliar role of caretaker. It didn't come naturally; he was rather clumsy and awkward about it. But it soothed the agitation that threatened to engulf him whenever thoughts of her narrow shave with Roselli intruded. That he hadn't kept her safe today was, he suspected, an issue with which he would grapple privately for the foreseeable future. Making her comfortable, feeding her, monitoring her condition and medication: they would fend off self-recrimination for the time being.

What would happen later, when there was solitude and leisure for reflection…that was another matter altogether.

Once he had finished tidying the kitchen he went to check on her. It was worrisome to discover that she'd turned on the television, the volume low. She stretched out her hand at his approach; he grasped it between both of his and knelt beside her as he had in his office. "Can't sleep?"

"A little jumpy for some reason."

"Have some more soup. It'll settle you down." She shook her head. "Glass of water? Cup of tea?"

"No, thanks. But I'd like it if you sat with me a while."

There was nothing he wanted more. He rose and took her in his arms. Ensconced on the sofa with her head in his lap, he peered across at the TV screen. "What's this?"

"I was hoping you could tell me."

"…Ah, yes. _The Quiet Man_. Wonderful stuff. An American boxer with a secret in his past refuses to fight again, not even for the girl he loves."

"It's set in Ireland, I think."

"It is indeed. Filmed partly at our beloved Ashford Castle." He kissed her forehead and then, more lingeringly, her lips. "Try and get some sleep, eh?"

"I will if you'll stay with me."

An echo of old times, old conversations, old fears. Most likely she was unaware of it. But the poignancy wasn't lost on him as he softly gave his old reply. "I'm not going anywhere, my love."

Silence fell. Eventually the regular tempo of her breathing and the fan of her lashes against her cheek told him that she slept. He dozed more fitfully than she, jerking into alertness every so often, imagining that she had stirred or was calling him. But she slept on.

John Wayne and Maureen O'Hara were supplanted at length by James Garner and Suzanne Pleshette in an American western setting. "_Support Your Local Gunfighter_," he muttered to himself. "United Artists, 1971." Not among his personal "top ten", but certainly the top two hundred. Worth watching, at any rate.

Not until he opened his eyes to find the room lit only by the television did he realize several hours had elapsed. Laura's warm weight was still draped across his midsection. Alan Ladd was riding off into the figurative celluloid sunset; young Brandon DeWilde, in the role of Joey Starrett, was uttering the immortal lines, "Shane! Shane! Come back!" Damn. It was one of his favorites. He'd missed the whole thing.

Waking Laura earlier had been so easy that he decided not to disturb her yet if he could help it. Careful to hold her head steady, he slid out from underneath her and got up. Swiftly he made his nightly tour of the downstairs, making sure windows and doors were locked, inside lights off, outdoor lights on, the alarm set and armed. Upstairs he switched on the lamps, turned down the bedclothes and went through his bedtime ablutions. Odd how long everything seemed to be taking. He found himself chafing with impatience to get back to her, to make sure she was all right. Or was it more a trace of superstitious fear, persuading himself she was only all right when he was with her?

In pajamas he descended the stairs. She continued to sleep peacefully. He was amazed at the overwhelming sense of relief that flooded him.

He leaned over and stroked her cheek. "Time for bed, my love." When she didn't react right away, his voice sharpened. "Laura?" And he shook her a little.

That roused her. She lifted a hand, reaching for him, before she even opened her eyes. "What?"

"I said I'm taking you up to bed." It looked like she was having trouble sitting up; he sat down and helped her. "How's the headache?"

"Weird. The longer I have it, the worse it seems to get. Maybe the pills aren't working."

"Well, you're not due for another dose for four hours, so sleep's probably the best thing for you. A good night's rest in bed." Her eyelids were drooping, so he added, raising his voice slightly, "Laura?"

She focused on him again. "I don't think I can make it that far."

"You won't have to. That's what I'm here for." He got to his feet and found he had to prompt her to put her arms around his neck. "Hang on, baby…mind your head. There we are. Up you get."

He lifted her off the sofa and carried her from the room. Though her eyes were heavy with sleep, they looked into his with a trace of dry humor. "You're secretly enjoying this, aren't you? This is twice in one day!"

Three times, he almost corrected her, and then stopped himself. He had no desire to relive in even the smallest measure the terror of that morning. "Of course I am," he said lightly. Holding you in my arms? Pampering you in ways you rarely allow me to? What's not to like?"

He had crossed the foyer and was heading towards the stairs. "Be honest now. Can you deny you're enjoying it, too?"

He could see her ponder that as he started to ascend. Missing for once was the reluctance she usually affected, as if allowing herself to relax in his arms would somehow call into question her identity as an independent, competent woman. Instead she caressed his cheek, then his lips, with gentle fingertips. "Of course I am. Safe hands, Mr. Steele," she murmured drowsily.

For the life of him he couldn't have described the effect those confiding gestures had on his heart.

By the time he got her to their bedroom, she had all but dropped off again. He set her on the bed, settled her under the covers and switched off the lights. Then he got in beside her. She moved into his embrace and nestled close with a long sigh. Barely a heartbeat later, she was deep in slumber.

He, on the other hand, didn't sleep at all. Not for a minute. Not for a second.

TO BE CONTINUED


	5. Chapter 5

Chapter 5

She had the first nightmare the following night.

The morning had gotten off to a rocky start. Yesterday's pliable Laura had vanished; from the crown of her head to the sole of her foot, she was as intractable as Remington had ever seen her. He knew he was in for it the moment she opened her eyes and impatiently disentangled herself from his arms. His questions about how she was feeling were met with brusque, almost monosyllabic replies. Yes, she was okay; no, the headache wasn't much better, but she could handle it. She refused to let him help her shower, shook off his hand when he tried to support her down the stairs, and insisted on getting her own breakfast instead of waiting for him to bring it to her in the den.

It was only when she upset her glass of orange juice for the second time that he intervened. With his hands gripping her upper arms he walked her firmly away from the mess on the counter and steered her to the sofa in the den, ignoring her sputters of indignation. There he sat her down and, before she could protest, scooped her legs up onto the cushions and covered them with the blanket. "Stay put til I get back."

It interested him to see that she was lying down of her own accord. It told him a lot, though she fixed him with the most withering glare she could muster. "You're a lousy nurse, you know that?" she said as he turned to go.

"That makes two of us, doesn't it, since you're a dreadful patient."

In the kitchen he sponged up what seemed like a lake of orange juice, filled a fresh glass. Together with a glass of water, some lightly buttered toast, and two of her pills, he loaded it onto a tray. This he deposited on the coffee table before passing her the plate of toast. "Have a few bites so you can take your pills."

She obeyed without an argument. Full daylight showed him that her pallor was no less than yesterday's. On the plus side, she was clearly more alert than she had been last night. "Aren't you going to the office?" she asked between mouthfuls of toast.

"I thought I might put in a few hours, yes. If you feel you're well enough to be left on your own."

"I'm fine." She took the water and the pills he handed to her and drained the glass, supported by his arm around her shoulders. "You'll call Jim Demerest first thing, right? And don't forget to check with Lieutenant Benjamin. Get him to tell you what he came up with on those fingerprints. Of course we already know it was Roselli, but we might be able to spot a pattern that'll tell us how got access to the office. Then you'll need to talk to building administration and security, in case anyone saw or heard anything."

"Benjamin's already done that." He eased her back onto the pillows.

"Oh." She paused, put out of her stride. "Well, it wouldn't hurt to explore it for ourselves. You know how the LAPD can be about sharing information.

"Speaking of sharing information, why didn't you tell him that Roselli may have been filching files since July?"

"Because if Roselli is the culprit, which I'm sure he is, there's more going on than a simple breaking and entering. He's been lurking around for months. Why? What's he after? Take a close look at those files he pulled. They might tell us something."

"Once Mildred sorts out the mess he left behind. She should've gained a lot of headway, if she worked at it all day yesterday." He hesitated for a moment. He hadn't yet divulged the clandestine arrangements he'd made with Benjamin. Might as well get it over with. "In the interest of sharing information, there's something I should tell you."

She appraised him with a shrewd gleam in her eye. "Mr. Steele, if I didn't know you better, I'd say you sound positively intimidated. Spill."

"I asked Benjamin to send detectives to watch the house today." And he steeled himself against the impending fireworks.

But she surprised him by merely mulling it over with the judicious expression she wore when deciding a course of action. "Not a bad idea. Especially if it gives you some of peace of mind while you're at the office." He raised his eyebrows. "What?" she demanded.

"That's it? No vociferous demonstrations of disapproval? No criticisms of my failure to solicit your input first?"

"None that I can think of."

"Good Lord. Who are you, and what have you done with my wife? That blow to the head must've brought about a complete personality change."

"I wouldn't lay money on it, if I were you." There was a suggestion of her usual spirit in the grin she flashed him.

By the time he'd showered and shaved, the plainclothesmen had arrived. At least, he assumed they were the occupants of the dingy but otherwise nondescript van parked a few doors down the street. He regarded it from the bedroom window with a silent prayer of thanksgiving for Lieutenant Benjamin. Unpleasant though the fellow might be, he didn't allow personal rancor to dissuade him from doing a good deed.

Yet the police presence wasn't the comfort Remington had envisioned. He hated the prospect of leaving Laura so much, it felt like a physical wrench. Every instinct in him was clamoring against it. Not that he questioned the detectives' skill or efficiency; he knew could trust them to do their job. But _he _should be the one to protect her. If Roselli should somehow skulk past the police and gain entrance to the house…if he discovered her here, unguarded, with no one in the immediate vicinity, no one within the range of her voice if she called, in no shape to defend herself, let alone fight back…

Rein it in, mate, he admonished himself. It was the last thing she needed, for him to be overcome by the personal demons this situation had called up. Focus, steadiness, a clear, cool head: she was depending on him for them.

He could only hope he also had the reserve of inner strength she seemed to think he possessed.

She opened her eyes when he went into the den to tell her good-bye. He'd arranged as much as he could for her convenience, a carafe of water and her medication on the coffee table, a light lunch stored in the refrigerator, a stack of movies with which to expand her cinematic horizons next to the VCR. "I'm off. Sure you'll be all right?"

"Fine. What time will you be home?"

He laid a hand on her forehead. "You'll know when I get here. And I'd better find you on this sofa when I do."

"Or what?"

"Tomorrow I'll have Frances come and babysit you."

"You wouldn't."

"Try me and see."

"You've got another thing coming if you think you're cooping me up here tomorrow, Mr. Steele."

"That's for Dr. Stiegmeyer to decide, eh, Mrs. Steele?"

She made a grudging noise in her throat that he took to be a yes. He moved his hand to her cheek, stroked it lightly with his thumb. "The plainclothesmen are right outside. And I'll be a phone call away. Okay?"

"Okay." She lifted her face when he bent to kiss her, her lips clinging to his with a fervency that was at total odds with her behavior. Her expression when they separated was slightly sheepish. "I didn't mean it when I called you a lousy nurse."

"I'm not sure whether that's a compliment or an apology, but thank you. You, on the other hand, do make a dreadful patient. And I wouldn't have it any other way." His face clouded, and for a moment he gazed at her in silence. "Kiss me again, Laura."

She linked her hands at the back of his neck and pulled him down to her. It wasn't passion—she wasn't recovered quite enough for that—but a way to communicate without words the emotions that still rocked them. They held each other a long time before she loosened her arms a little. "Go on. I'm fine."

But he was loath to release her. "I love you, you know," he whispered around a final kiss.

"I know. And I love you. Go on."

Arrived at the office, he found that he had accurately predicted Mildred's industriousness. She had restored much of the scattered paperwork to the appropriate files, and had tried to organize the files themselves into categories. "It took some doing, too," she commented. "It's almost like he picked out a smidgen of everything to throw us off the scent."

"How so?"

"There's no rhyme or reason I can see. Murders, missing persons, thefts, even security contracts. And the timeline--all over the place, as far back as '81, before you got here, and as recent as six months ago. I can't guess what he could've been looking for. Can you, Chief?"

He gazed absently at the stacked manila folders. No, he hadn't a clue. His was a mind that wove the threads of outward experience into narratives, stories, rather than seeking rational patterns as Laura's did. "Neither can I, to be honest. We'll leave it for Mrs. Steele's return."

"Think she'll be back soon?"

"You know Laura. She'd be here this minute if she could keep on her feet for any length of time." He became aware that Mildred was wringing her hands and shifting her weight uncertainly. "Something bothering you?"

"I owe you and Mrs. Steele an apology. I was running late for work yesterday morning. I'm sorry. If I'd been here on time, I would've found her and saved you a ton of grief."

He put an arm around her and squeezed affectionately. "Nonsense. You didn't do anything wrong. And we both appreciate your covering the office so I could stay home with her. Let's keep the blame squarely where it belongs, on that filthy bugger's shoulders."

Sticking to the agenda Laura had laid out for him that morning—not, he felt, that he needed her guidance in recognizing agency priorities, but to prevent her from fretting over it—he phoned Jim Demerest to give him an update. They had spoken briefly yesterday about Laura's injury and the status of the rendezvous between Mihalec and Eitschl. The latter remained uppermost in Demerest's mind. "It worries me, how dependent we are on what Jürgen does next. That month-end meeting of the brokers association, the one he's hosting, will be here before we know it. If you don't have photos and the tape by then--"

"Ah, but you see, that's the beauty of what we achieved the other night. Remember, your goal at the meeting will be prompting him to open the safe in front of the other association members. The proof you'll uncover there will be ample to arouse the association's suspicions and remove him and Dhillon from their positions. Which is our main objective at this point. As for the other, it'll happen. I promise you it's simply a matter of time."

As it had with Mihalec, his optimistic tone seemed to assuage Demerest's doubts. "All right, Mr. Steele. You came through for Charles Dumont; I have confidence you'll do the same for me. I'll see you and Mrs. Steele in our offices next week."

His conversation with Lieutenant Benjamin was considerably less satisfactory, even though he opened it with sincere thanks for the plainclothes detectives. But Benjamin brushed his gratitude aside. "The only prints we found were your wife's and your secretary's. No big shock there--he would've wiped the place clean if he's the pro you say he is. So far we haven't turned up anything in his background that contradicts what you already found out."

"What about other leads? Someone who might've seen him coming in or going out?"

"We're working on it, Steele." Yes, there was the Benjamin he knew, surly and non-cooperative. "My advice is, sit tight and let us do our job. I'll be in touch when we got something concrete."

Remington had barely uttered fifteen words but nevertheless managed to antagonize the police. Splendid. Annoyed with himself and Benjamin, he replaced the receiver. Mildred was heading towards him with a package, a large one, and he shoved the phone aside to accommodate it. "What's this?"

"You got me. Ovenight Fed Ex delivery. Must be important."

He examined the label and shot her a satirical glance. "The Camden Original Knit Company?"

"Maybe it's something Mrs. Steele ordered."

The box contained two cable knit sweaters, one in sapphire blue, his size, the other, much smaller, in tomato red. He turned them over to examine them, then rummaged through layers of tissue paper for a key to the puzzle they represented. His brow furrowed as he retrieved an invoice and scanned it. "What in blazes--? Have a look at this."

A beat or two, and Mildred raised an equally nonplussed face to him. "I don't get it." She began to read aloud. " 'Dear Mr. Steele, thank you for your purchase from the Camden Original Knit Company. It was a pleasure to meet you. As my wife and I told you during your fitting in our store, we pride ourselves on the quality of our custom designs tailored to your measurements and hand knitting. Notice the shade of blue to match your eyes just as you requested and the red to copy the dress your wife is wearing in the photo you provided. We are returning your photo to you. We hope you enjoy wearing your sweaters as much as we enjoyed making them. Sincerely, Bob and Carol Teasdale, The Camden Original Knit Company, Camden, Maine'. Chief, you took a trip to Maine I don't know about and ordered sweaters for a souvenir?"

"Don't be ridiculous, Mildred. I'm not even certain where Maine is." He had extracted the photo from the bottom of the box and was gazing down at it.

"Then it's gotta be some kind of practical joke."

"If it is, someone's gone to rather elaborate lengths to stage it." And he beckoned her closer.

The presence of her wedding ring indicated that the picture of Laura was fairly recent. A medium shot, the background indiscernible, in which she was looking not into the camera, but off to the middle distance. The dress she wore was one he loved on her, a cap-sleeved shift with a triple flounce at the hem.

"Holy cow!" Mildred breathed.

"You've no idea where or when this was taken, do you?"

"I've never seen it before."

"Nor have I. Though I don't suppose it really matters. The pertinent question is, who took it, and how did they get her to pose for it?"

"Unless she didn't. They could've used a long range lens."

He grimaced. "An alternative that doesn't bear thinking of, given what happened yesterday." Unfolding the blue sweater, he held it up to his shoulders. "Well, it certainly looks my size. Custom tailoring, he said in the letter, fitted in their store." He let it drop back into the box. "We'll see what Mrs. Steele knows about it. In the meantime, I've visits to make to security and building administration and errands to run. If you hear from Laura, have her ring me in the Rabbit, will you?"

En route to his destination in Burbank some time later, Remington pondered the facts he had gleaned at the office, trying to arrange them in a logical progression. His stop at building administration had yielded little beyond the fact that Benjamin had interviewed the other tenants. Results? They'd no idea. The Steele agency would have to investigate personally if they wanted more specifics. In other words, legwork. Ordinarily the mere suggestion of it fatigued him. Today he found himself energized. He'd have interviewed every last occupant of the building a hundred times over if it brought him a centimeter closer to nailing Roselli.

The security supervisor had been more helpful, offering details on the night guards' schedules as well as their names. "Silvestri, Ganz, Cleveland and Jiminez are my full-time guys," he'd told Remington. "Eliot's kids live with their mother, so we rotate him according to when he's got visitation. He worked early shift last night and won't be back til Friday. But Manny Silvestri comes on at six tonight, if you want to ask him about yesterday's late shift."

Running it through his head again, he frowned. It was awfully thin, really. Not much to go on at all. He could see no link, no starting point that would open a path to Roselli. How did one set about finding a man who seemed to possess the power to vanish and reappear at will, conceal himself in plain sight and gain entrance to the most tightly locked and closely protected venues with almost supernatural ease?

More to the point, how did one protect one's wife from the uncanny bastard?

Only one idea came to mind.

Ten minutes later, he was browsing the display cases at Websters Gun World. For the first time in his life he was about to purchase a gun.

He'd never cared for them, guns. Perhaps that was why Remington Steele Investigations had seemed so perfect a fit for him from the very beginning. Laura didn't like them, either. She limited her reliance on them to a minimum, at any rate. Extraordinary, for she was an excellent shot, far more accurate and consistent than he. But she always downplayed her skill, preferring the challenge, as she put it, of prevailing over the bad guys by means of her wits and instincts.

In that respect she was more like his father than she would probably care to acknowledge. In six years of active collaboration with Daniel Chalmers, Remington had never seen him so much as touch a firearm; he'd always spoken of them with a dismissive snort. "They're the resort of men of little intelligence and even less creativity. Haven't you noticed how the size of the gun always increases in inverse proportion to intellectual capacity? There's really only one civilized use for a gun."

"Grouse shooting, no doubt."

"Dueling, my boy! The best method ever devised for settling affairs of honor between gentlemen. Pistols at thirty paces! Simple, straightforward and conclusive. Pity it's been outlawed for the past two hundred years. It would certainly enliven the anemic times we live in." The teasing sparkle had died out of Daniel's eyes. "I shan't ever employ guns in our work, Harry. If you'll take my advice, neither will you."

He had taken it. And he'd adhered to it more or less faithfully ever since. There'd been a time or two since arriving in Los Angeles when he'd been tempted to resolve an intolerable situation by means of a bullet--Anna's appearance in his life came to mind—but they had been brief. Always the impulse had died out, leaving him to wonder what species of insanity had come over him in the first place.

Funny how a threat to the woman he loved had breathed life back into it again.

As it turned out, the process of acquiring a gun was a lot less complicated than he'd imagined. Evidently the cachet attached to the name 'Remington Steele' cleared away obstacles here as neatly as it did elsewhere. In a little over twenty minutes, the sales clerk had completed the paperwork that would authorize him to replace the gun that Roselli had stolen from the agency.

Twenty minutes after that, Remington was exiting the store with both his purchases: one, a revolver much the size and shape of the one they'd lost, perfectly fitted for Laura's smaller hand.

For himself, the legalities of the waiting period and background check discreetly expedited, his safe handling demo passed with flying colors, a .357 magnum Colt, complete with ammunition.

He had barely pulled out of the parking lot for the return trip to Century City when the mobile phone rang. Over the line came Mildred's voice, its frantic note as clear as if she were beside him in the passenger seat. "Chief! Thank God! I've been trying to reach you for almost an hour."

_Laura_. His grip on the receiver tightened convulsively. He'd refrained from calling home on purpose, partly to allow her to sleep undisturbed, partly because he could foresee her reaction to excessive hovering from him. Now he could've torn at himself in distress for ignoring his better instincts. If something had _happened_ to her--

With his mouth suddenly gone dry as dust, he demanded, "What's wrong?"

"Reporters! Ten of 'em so far, all asking for details on the break-in and how Mrs. Steele's doing. It was even on the radio news roundup at the top of the hour. What do you want me to do?"

Coping with too many crises at once had sapped his ingenuity and left him stammering. "Stall them---and for God's sake, don't tell them anything! I'll be there directly."

Mildred dragged him into his office the minute he crossed the agency's threshold. "Spotlight News had a report at noon. I taped it for you."

Their old acquaintance, newswoman Windsor Thomas, faced the camera from behind the anchor desk with her trademark combination of sultriness and gravity. "…and in local news, police say they still have no leads on the intruder who ransacked the Century City offices of high-powered detective Remington Steele. Mr. Steele's wife, a former operative, was injured during the incident. No word on her condition. Mr. Steele's office has yet to issue a statement. Burt?"

Remington had buried his head in his hands while the videotape was playing, and now he groaned. " 'Ransack'? 'Intruder'? 'Incident'? The longer she speaks, the more sordid it sounds."

"How did they even get wind of it, is what I want to know? We're gonna need some kind of damage control, and pronto."

"In more ways than one. If Laura's heard any of this--" Abruptly he rose. "Perhaps she hasn't and there's still time to break it to her before she does…if I can get to her first--Mildred, hold down the fort, okay? I've a feeling this is something best taken care of in person."

"Good luck on that, Chief."

Of course he didn't make it out of the office; of course the telephone began to ring. And, of course, Mildred called him back. "It's Mrs. Steele."

Laura's voice was crisp and commanding, not a circumstance that boded well for him. "Mr. Steele? You're needed at home. I suggest you make it sooner rather than later, or I won't be held responsible for my actions."

Before he could frame the first word of his reply, the line went dead.

Mildred was gazing at him with open commiseration. He responded with a crooked grin.

"Too late," he said.

* * *

"Laura, would you at least listen to me for five minutes?"

"I have been listening. And so far I haven't heard a single workable solution towards redeeming this disaster."

She was exactly where he'd hoped she'd be when he got home, lying on the sofa. Still too pale for his liking, she was, and apparently still suffering from dizziness. But none of if had prevented her from jumping into the fray with both feet the moment he appeared, as stubborn and combative as if she were in perfect health. If memories of the attack were disturbing her, she gave no sign of it.

Determined not to escalate if he could avoid it, he attempted to soothe her. "Don't you think you're blowing it a little out of proportion? It's embarrassing, yes, disconcerting, I agree, but hardly a--"

"Out of proportion? Not only have we been the lead story in every radio news broadcast within a hundred miles, but now we're on television, thanks to your little groupie, Windsor. I'm betting we'll be in every newspaper this evening. Mildred tells me she's taken calls from fifteen reporters and counting. How could anyone possibly accuse me of blowing it out of proportion?"

"Assuming the worst, then. I'll admit, on first glance the publicity doesn't shed a very positive light on us, but it wasn't our fault Roselli broke into the office. Surely a potential client would realize it and give us the benefit of the doubt."

"I'll tell you what a potential client will see." Wincing, she inched herself into a sitting position. He held his breath, barely curbing the urge to intervene, which experience told him she wouldn't have accepted kindly just then. "A break-in at our office, meaning that we can't handle our own security, so how can we expect to be entrusted with theirs? Our files breached—there goes our guarantee of confidentiality. One of us hurt? We're lousy at self-defense. Getting the picture, Mr. Steele, or should I continue?"

"Not necessary. I take your point."

"What I want to know is, whatever possessed you to call the police in the first place?"

"What are you _talking_ about?"

"This isn't the first break-in we've had since you became Remington Steele. Did we ever report any of the others?"

"No, but--"

"Then you should've figured there was a reason and acted accordingly." And she crossed her arms as if she had just scored a direct hit.

So much for his resolution to stay calm. The rise in his blood pressure was palpable. "Why didn't you say so at the time? You were lying right there when I asked Mildred to call!"

"With a head injury. Not thinking straight. Trusting you to put the agency first in your decisions."

"So you're fresh from a brush with death that was nearer than I care to think, Roselli's absconded with our gun—which, let me remind you, it's thanks to the merciful heavens alone he didn't use on you—and I'm supposed to be worrying about the agency?"

"As Remington Steele, your number one priority should always be the agency and its reputation."

"As Remington Steele, there are priorities far more important to me than the agency's reputation. You, in a word, and making sure that piece of filth's caught before he decides to finish the job he started yesterday. If that means turning to the police for help, too bloody bad."

"You see? That's exactly why I could never make equal control of the business part of our partnership. You're forever letting feelings trump your objectivity. We can track him ourselves, Remington. We don't need the police!"

His temper, already at flash point, ignited. "It's wearing thin, this nonsense, I'm warning you," he said sharply. "Laura Steele, lone wolf. His bashing you over the head wasn't enough? We're to hand him the chance for another crack at you? Over my dead body, and I don't give a damn if every last reporter in America hears about the break-in."

"That's what I love about you, Mr. Steele. Your undeniable talent for stating the obvious." While he watched, she began to fight her way up from the sofa. Obviously in her opinion the argument was over. "I'm going upstairs to get some sleep. Don't bother fixing me any dinner."

It had to be sheer cussedness alone that enabled her to march from the room. Not that cussedness was sufficient to maintain her on a straight course, or save her from stumbling a little on the lowest step of the staircase. But her expression when he sprang to her side so clearly forbade him to touch her that he backed off immediately.

For the rest of the afternoon and early evening he pottered aimlessly about the house. Preparing a full course meal for one struck him as absurd, so he heated up the soup from last night and ate it in front of AMC. But his beloved classic films failed to cast their usual spell. His mind continually strayed to the second floor, to the slender figure curled up in their bed, wondering if she were asleep, if she were comfortable, if she were hungry or thirsty, if she had taken her pills…and on and on.

Finally he climbed the stairs. In front of the closed door to their bedroom, he hesitated, thought better of entering and passed on to his studio.

Studio was perhaps too grand a word for it. In reality it was the third, unused, bedroom, in which they'd installed Laura's ballet barre and a desk and drawing table for him. That wasn't all it held. On his real birthday—July twenty-third, not the September date on which they had celebrated in previous years—she had surprised him with a full complement of gear and materials: sketchbooks, pastel and watercolor and regular colored pencils, drawing pens, brushes and art boards, the works. So much loot that he couldn't recall it all. Possibly because it was eclipsed by the recollection of her face when she'd presented him with the packages, its radiance, the tender glow in her brown eyes as she anticipated his reaction.

The amazing thing was, he was actually using her gift. He'd returned from London in July on fire with ambition to prove that he was a worthy Chalmers heir, at least in terms of his artistic ability. No more brief, spasmodic spurts of activity, followed by weeks and sometimes months when he never so much as picked up a pencil. He would set a routine, he'd promised himself, and stick to it. He would study and work and grow. Who knew what he might achieve in his drawing if he finally learned to persevere?

Perseverance was a harder trait to acquire than he'd foreseen however. Always some obstacle had seemed to trip him up, a late client meeting, an invitation to a can't-miss event, the blasted L.A. traffic. Even his own fascination with cinema stole away time he ought to have spent with his sketchbook. He _would_ have to be the one Chalmers who'd inherited both the acting gene and the artistic gene and found his devotion to the first completely incompatible with the practice of the second.

Thank goodness for Laura. She'd been the repository of his dreams from the very beginning and remained a steadfast source of encouragement. Never for a second did she begrudge him the time and solitude he needed to get on with it. More than that: she'd helped reorient him to work in the morning rather than at night, routing him out of bed when he would've given in to the temptation to snooze another five minutes, another ten, an additional half hour. He was usually resentful rather than grateful while it was happening, but quick to acknowledge later that any progress he was making was largely due to her. His Muse, was how he thought of her. She was in his corner. She wanted him to succeed.

Fitting that she was his favorite subject as well. He'd embarked recently on a series of pencil studies of her at her exercises, capturing her in various poses. Battement tendu, croisé devant, arabesque, attitude, she called them. He wasn't sure of all the names, or which was which, but loved them for the way they emphasized the elegant lines of her body, her elusive grace, the contrast to her level-headed detective side that constantly fascinated him. She was never the slightest bit self-conscious in his presence; on the contrary, she seemed to enjoy sharing the process with him, mingling his art and hers, and would obligingly repeat a motion or hold a position as long as necessary until he'd got it down on paper. The perfect model. He couldn't have asked for a better.

At his work table he opened his portfolio and spread the drawings before him. It was odd, the artistic process. On some occasions he could return to a sketch after few hours or a day, and it would impress him as quite good. On others he would ask himself what he'd been thinking when he executed it. The angles and curves were askew, or the hair didn't resemble Laura's in the slightest, or had he actually believed the smirk he'd drawn could pass for her enchanting smile? At such times, he would rub out and revise, chafing at his inability to capture adequately his image of her, both the physical one and the one he held in his mind's eye.

This was one of those nights. Dissatisfaction reigned. For a while he tried to amend what he didn't like, but finally had to admit he was only making things worse. Representations of Laura couldn't substitute for the real thing just now. Much wiser to call it a night and head off to bed.

An opportune decision, for it meant he was in the bedroom in time to catch the telephone on the first ring. "Remington?" said his sister-in-law. "Oh, my God! We just saw on the news that your office was broken into and something happened to Laura! Is she okay?"

"Fine. She's fine. A slight concussion, but a few days' rest and she'll be right as rain." While he spoke he was moving as far from the bed as the cord's length would allow. Why he hadn't thought of alerting the Pipers to Laura's injury, he couldn't have explained, and was relieved when Frances didn't ask him about it.

"Would you put her on?"

"Afraid I can't at the moment. She's asleep."

A torrent of conversation from Frances ensued. He coped with it as best he could, despite his burgeoning impatience. At last it got the upper hand: he cut across the flow of words. "I'll give Laura your love, okay? Ring her back tomorrow, or I'll have her ring you."

"Oh, I will. Tell her I'll talk to her first thing. And remember, if either of you need anything, I can be there in under an hour. All you have to do is call."

Aware that his end of the conversation had been a shade brusque, he tried to imbue his farewell with as much warmth as he could. "I'll remember. Thank you, Frances. Say hello to Donald for us, won't you, and the kids?"

Laura stirred and opened one eye as he came around to her nightstand to hang up the phone. "Frances?"

"Mm-hm. Saw the story on the news." He slipped under the covers on his side.

"She's not coming to babysit me tomorrow, is she?" Even muffled by the pillow, the apprehensive note in her voice was audible.

"Would I do that to you?"

She didn't turn over, but her hands closed over his forearms when he gathered her to him from behind. "You might, just to annoy me."

In contrast to the preceding night, he was out like a light almost before he had properly settled down. He wakened equally abruptly at an unknown hour, fighting to orient himself. He was in their bed, and that was Laura spooned in his arms, but what was it he was hearing?

Finally he identified it, the sound that he dreaded above all others. Laura was crying.

In equal parts bewilderment and alarm he bent over her and brushed the hair back from her cheek. "Hey…Hey, me darlin'," he whispered. "Hey. What's wrong, eh?" She didn't respond, so he rolled her over to face him. It was then that he saw she was in the midst of a nightmare—not the dramatic, thrashing-from-side-to-side kind, but one that brought with it harsh sobs and sent tears flooding from beneath her closed eyelids down over her cheeks.

He didn't know what to do except shake her gently and stay within her line of sight. Sleep never stupefied her as it did him; she was cognizant and fully present with him as soon as she opened her eyes. "Oh, God," she whispered, and shut them again.

"Is your head hurting? Hm?"

"No worse than it has been."

"I'll get you some water."

"No!" She clutched him hard. "No. Let's just…lay here for a few minutes." And she rested her forehead against him in an effort to swallow the sobs.

Her distress was difficult to watch. She hated to cry, hated it more than just about anything, hated the weakness and vulnerability it implied. Even with him, she rarely let go; only twice within his memory had she done it to this extent, and those were occasions of serious personal trauma. Mystifying, really, because she had dropped her guard so thoroughly with him in every other area of their relationship. It wasn't distrust of him, but something much more profound. A locked and fiercely defended citadel, he was beginning to think, to which he might never win access.

It made him hesitant as he tried to comfort her. She was calmer now, the tears under control. He heard her deep inhalation and exhalation. "Bad dream?" he said softly.

"Yeah." She raised her face to his.

"Roselli, I'll wager. Don't talk about it if you don't want to."

For a beat she was quiet, and he thought he'd gauged her mood correctly. Then she said, "It was more about you than him. I opened the door to my office, just like yesterday, and you were there."

"You mean I hit you?" He stared at her, aghast that her unconscious could've manufactured such an image. That his own had once done the identical thing under the stress of interrogation never entered his head.

"You were on the floor. He'd killed you."

This was somehow more disturbing than a replay of the incident as it actually unfolded would have been.

"And with me out of the way, he set on you."

"No, he just stood there. Laughing. This awful, raucous laugh." She took up a fold of the sheet and blotted the last of her tears. Then she gave him a wry smile. "It seemed real, obviously. Maybe next time I'll think twice before going to bed on an empty stomach."

"I thought it was a full stomach that was supposed to cause nightmares."

It seemed safe this time to leave her. He lit the lamp and went for the glass of water he'd offered earlier, stretching out on an elbow next to her while she drank. Her expression wasn't agitated, but thoughtful, and he cocked his head to one side. "You're onto something."

"Why do you say that?"

His forefinger traced the crease between her brows. "Always a telltale sign."

"I'm almost embarrassed to bring it up, it sounds so stupid. But Roselli was wearing a uniform in the dream."

"What kind of uniform?"

"That's what I've been trying to figure out."

"Well, do you remember what color it was?"

"I don't dream in color all the time."

"Don't you? I thought everybody did. What do you suppose that says about you psychologically?"

"I think it says I don't always dream in color. It could have been Army. It would certainly track with what we know about him."

"Except that Bumpers wasn't able to uncover a current tax connection that proves he's still in the Army."

"He doesn't have to be on the payroll to wear the uniform."

"A uniform to break into an office building? Far too conspicuous."

"Unless he was using it as some sort of cover in case he got caught…A recruiter? Military police? Think, Mr. Steele. What else could he have come up with?"

Nothing occurred to Remington. He spread his hands.

She sighed in defeat. "Never mind. I told you it was stupid. I'd say the same thing to a client if they came to me with a theory based on a dream they'd had."

Not long afterward, they turned in for good--or rather, she did. His own need for rest seemed to have fled. He lay there tense and watchful, staring unseeing into the darkness.

It was those sobs. He couldn't get the echo of them out of his ears. Harsh, despairing sobs, torn out of Laura against her will.

They were almost as grave an affront to him as the attack itself had been.

He thought of the brand new Colt revolver securely locked in the safe downstairs.

Antony, you miserable son of a bitch, he addressed the other man silently. You'll pay for all of it. I don't know how or where, but you'll pay. I'll make sure you do.

TO BE CONTINUED


	6. Chapter 6

Chapter 6

Laura continued to recover steadily from the concussion, and by the end of the week Dr. Stiegmeyer had cleared her return to work on Monday. She wasn't altogether herself yet; her energy level was still low, and the headache kept recurring, usually in the evening. So did the nightmares. Nothing to be alarmed about, the doctor had advised the Steeles. A few more weeks of taking it easy during the day and getting plenty of sleep at night, and she would be totally back to normal.

Unfortunately, they couldn't say the same about the agency. The bad publicity was having a noticeable effect on business. Inquiries and requests for preliminary consultations had fallen off, and several clients with consultations already on the schedule called to cancel them. Even in established clients, Remington thought he was beginning to detect a note of wariness. Their confidence had eroded, just as Laura had predicted. They were no longer so certain the name Remington Steele represented the invulnerability they'd believed it did.

It didn't help matters that there were no new leads on Roselli. For the better part of Thursday and Friday, Remington had interviewed other tenants in their building who might possibly have been on site early Tuesday morning. There he came up empty. It was the same with Manny Silvestri, the security guard who had been on duty. "I don't see how this guy could've gotten in without me seeing him, Mr. Steele," Silvestri said. "Especially at night. It's the new rules Mr. Hastings set up after the business with them Santas last year. After five o'clock, this place is buttoned up tight. Security cameras, electronic sensors, IDs at the front doors. He would've had to get through them and me before he made it up to your office."

As far as Remington could glean from a close-mouthed Lieutenant Benjamin, the police weren't making any progress, either. Just as he had in London, their adversary had dropped beneath the radar without leaving a trace.

Except, perhaps, Remington's presentiment, infrequently expressed but persistent, that Roselli lingered close in the shadows…hidden, watching.

First thing Monday morning, the Steeles and Mildred caucused in Remington's office to assess the damage.

"…two no-shows and a cancellation on Thursday, three cancellations and a no-show on Friday, and four today. That makes eleven all together so far." Mildred closed the appointment calendar, the pages of which were emptying with dismaying speed. "Oh, and Mr. Hingst wants to talk to one of you about re-negotiating his retainer. Says he might have been too hasty and has to re-think."

"Tell him we'll need sixty day's notice in writing, Mildred. He knows that. He's been with us almost seven years. Mr. Steele? Any luck with the call-backs?"

"No one would speak to me directly, so I left messages for all of them. Not a word from anyone as of this morning."

This took Laura aback, but only for a second. "Well, give them a few days, then try again if we don't hear. What about the missing persons and account searches, Mildred? How are we doing there?"

"Okay, I guess. Those people aren't spooked so much by the idea of a robbery. But that's small potatoes, Boss. We all know it isn't enough to put food on the table for any of us over the long haul."

"Or pay the mortgage." Remembering the string of zeroes at the tail of his home loan, Remington looked glum.

"Put a sock in it, both of you," commanded Laura. "It's bad enough, our clients swallowing media gossip about us like a juicy tidbit, without you losing all sense of perspective about it."

Remington narrowed his eyes thoughtfully. "And just how did the media get hold of the juicy tidbit in the first place? That's what I'd like to know. And I believe I know just the person to tell us. Mildred, track down the number for Spotlight News, would you?"

"Remington!" Windsor Thomas greeted him as soon as her secretary switched him through. "It's about time. I was beginning to think you took the story we ran on you personally. How's Laura?"

"Fully recovered and back at it, thanks. You're right, by the way."

"About what?"

"We have taken the story personally. Why in blazes didn't you come to us for corroboration before going on air? Or at least warn us it was coming?"

"It was news. Nothing gets in the way of reporting the news."

Her old mantra. She hadn't changed a bit since the days their paths had first crossed in the Billie Young case. Then again, she had no incentive to do so; it was her ruthlessness that had carried her to the top of the local news scene, after all. "It's caused no end of havoc for us. Of course you knew it would and went ahead in spite of it. But answer me one question. Who's your source?"

"The press has a legal right to decline to reveal our sources to law enforcement agencies."

"We're not law enforcement. Who is it?"

There was silence on the other line, during which he could almost hear the gears turning in her beautiful, but fundamentally unscrupulous, head. "An anonymous tip," she said at last. "A man—at least it sounded like a man—called here Wednesday morning with the information. And the police confirmed they'd been called to your office."

An anonymous tip. Undoubtedly that was how and why every media outlet in town was privy to the story. Nor did it take a big leap to guess the tipster's identity.

"What else did he say, this tipster of yours?"

"Nothing much beyond the bare facts. Any idea who he might be?"

"A detective agency has a right to decline to discuss the progress of an ongoing investigation with the press."

She laughed deep in her throat. "I should've seen that coming. You probably already know who it was and why your office was broken into. Come on. Give me some insight into the investigative process here."

"Can't, I'm afraid. It's in the LAPD's hands--Lieutenant Benjaimin, to be precise. I'm sure he'd be delighted to cooperate, if you ask him nicely. In the meantime, thanks for the help. Your…candor…is always appreciated."

"Yours for the asking. Give my best to your wife. Oh, and Remington? When you're ready to go public with your side of the story, call me first?"

He relayed the conversation to Laura, including Windsor's suggested quid pro quo. "It's not a bad idea," she replied. "Getting our side of the story out. We need to take control of this situation before it's beyond salvage, and that's a logical first step."

"Appearing on Spotlight News?"

"I have something less conspicuous in mind. A publicist. Someone who can work the story while we stay behind the scenes and get us favorable press, for a change. Your buddy Leon?"

"I'll ring him. You mean to tell him Roselli was behind the break-in, I take it."

"Does that bother you?"

"It wouldn't be so bad if we could predict his reaction. He's one for lurking in the shadows, our Antony. I suspect he won't take kindly to us shining the light on him. Or our going on the offensive."

"It wasn't a problem for you when he showed up in London the night we got engaged. As I recall, you couldn't wait to go on the offensive. Jerk him around for a change, was how you put it."

"That was London. It isn't quite so simple now." He didn't elaborate on the complications to which he alluded, and she didn't press him. "I'll phone Leon and ask him to take a meeting. Preferably sometime today."

But Leon Pulver, publicist to the stars, refused to meet with them at all. "Sorry, babe, I don't do damage control. Failure's like the common cold: contagious. What can I say, man? You're catching. If you get over it, we'll talk. And if a sexy case comes your way? _People Mag_ potential? I'll be there for you. _Ciao_."

"Splendid, absolutely splendid," Remington griped to Laura. "The bloody twit. What do we do now?"

"We start where everyone else does. The _Yellow Pages_."

They found what they were looking for in Stacie Adamski, a woman of about thirty-three who had worked eight years as an associate in a large public relations firm before striking out on her own. She specialized in marketing companies, not individuals, assuredly not celebrities, and overflowed right off the bat with recommendations for rehabilitating the Steele brand. "There are little steps we can take to up your profile in the community," she explained to the Steeles. It was Tuesday morning, and she was meeting with them in Remington's office. "Easy to implement and quick results. Speaking engagements, for example. I understand you used to speak frequently, Mr. Steele, but your schedule's lightened up since you got married. Is that about right?"

Remington exchanged a glance with his wife. It was true that for the past four months he'd been blowing off the ancillary activities for which she'd originally hired him and at which he'd proven himself damn near indispensable. It wasn't difficult to explain: they bored him now. Any free evenings he'd had, he preferred to spend with Laura, not a roomful of tedious stuffed shirts fascinated with their own importance. "A fair assessment, yes."

"We'll have to fill up your plate again. And events, charities, in particular, especially when they're related to the law or crime prevention. Another area where you've lost focus."

"Yes."

"This is all well and good, Mrs. Adamski," Laura interjected. "I can see what you're driving at and how it will help eventually. But what about directly countering the negative publicity? Can't you convince the papers to carry an article that presents our side of the break-in?"

"I could try. Odds are reporters won't look at the idea twice. You've waited too long. Unless you can connect it to a current case, one that's attention-getting--"

"Possibly," said Remington, thinking of Eitschl and Mihalec. "But it's too early to divulge the details. Perhaps in a week or two, when it's resolved--"

"Try this on for size." Once again Laura had interrupted, this time jumping out of her chair. Head tilted, one hand cupping her chin, she began to pace. "Our intruder was no ordinary thief, Mrs. Adamski. He's a government agent named Tony Roselli. Mr. Steele and I first ran into him in Mexico in May, on our honeymoon. Except it wasn't an accidental meeting. He was deliberately maneuvering to get close to us so he could enlist my husband's help on a case."

"Laura--" Remington said. His blue eyes, riveted on her, held a warning gleam.

"Interesting." Adamski was scribbling rapid notes. "Go on."

"Roselli claimed he was after an MI5 agent he suspected was also spying for the Soviets. A double agent, in other words. He wanted Mr. Steele's help to smoke him out. But things got hairy, as they tend to do in espionage, and it turned out Helmsley wasn't the double agent at all. It was someone much higher on the chain of command, a man named Sterling Fitch."

"_Laura…_"

Ignoring her husband's compressed lips and frowning brow, Laura proceeded with her tale. "Capturing Fitch would've been quite a coup for Roselli, you understand. A real feather in his cap. He needed it, because Fitch was setting him up to look like the double agent. But my husband's late father beat Roselli to it. Daniel Chalmers. He was--"

"Would you excuse us, Mrs. Adamski?" Remington had not only closed the distance between him and Laura before she could react, but grabbed her by the arm. "I need a word with Mrs. Steele. Won't be a moment."

Behind the door of her office, he rounded on her, his voice a furious hiss. "Laura, have you gone completely insane? What the hell do you think you're doing?"

"Saving our business. That's why we're hiring her, isn't it?"

"You—she--" His outrage was hampering his ability to string a sentence together. "You're telling her about London!—and Ireland! And Daniel!"

"Brilliant observation. Is there any reason I shouldn't?"

"As if I need to spell out why it's dangerous. Make my relationship with Daniel common knowledge, and we'll have Immigration breathing down our necks again. We can't take the risk!"

She regarded him, her composure a contrast to his vehemence. "What risk? What danger? That's the old mindset. You're in the clear with Immigration, remember? Even if you weren't, we can prove he's your father _and _his nationality, if we have to."

"All of which exposes the fact that I'm not Remington Steele!"

"Well, I told you! I warned you in Menton it could happen someday! But did you listen to me?"

"So you've done an about-face and it's time to throw me to the wolves to save the agency?"

"I'm not throwing you to anyone. Like it or not—and trust me, I don't—this is a gamble we have to take. Otherwise we face the real possibility we'll end up with no business at all. After which the question of whether you're Steele or not becomes completely moot."

"It might not work the way you think. Have you considered that, eh? You're the one who pointed out how unpredictable he is, Roselli. You think you'll lure him out of the shadows by putting the truth about him out there for all to see? Perhaps he'll decide he's nothing left to lose and come after us with both barrels."

"Let him. He's using bad press to make trouble for us, if he's the one behind the anonymous tip. Well, two can play that game. Look," she added on a more conciliatory note. "I know it's a lousy solution. But we're hemorrhaging clients, and this is the best I can come up with on short notice to stem the tide. If you have a better idea, I'd love to hear it."

He hadn't, and he knew that she knew it. He glared his frustration at her.

"I'll take that as a no," she said. "If you're through, I've think we've left Mrs. Adamski hanging long enough, don't you?"

After a brief apology to their guest, Laura picked up the narrative exactly where she'd left off. "Daniel—Remington's father, Daniel Chalmers--was awarded a posthumous knighthood for his role in capturing Fitch. He died unexpectedly in the middle of carrying out his plan, though, so Remington stepped in and pulled it off for him. Meanwhile, Roselli ended up in an Irish jail for three days. It wasn't Remington's fault; the Irish police were acting on information Fitch had planted. But Roselli blames him for it, and for taking away his chance to be the big hero."

Adamski tapped her pen on her notepad. "Would I be drawing the wrong conclusion if I said it sounds like he broke into your office for revenge?"

"We're not sure yet why he broke in. But we do know he has no connection to our cases or clients, past or present. Oh, one more thing. Sterling Fitch's trial for treason started in London last week."

"Is it information you can work with?" Remington asked Adamski. He concealed it well, but Laura could see by the set of his mouth that he remained adamantly opposed to the proceedings.

"It definitely has possibilities. I'd need you to flesh in the details to make it a story I can sell."

For most of the next half hour, they supplied her with carefully edited background: Remington's rendezvous with Helmsley at Paddington station; Roselli's flight to Ireland as an uninvited third on their honeymoon; Remington's clever disposition of the three coffins that ensured Kemodov's defection to America, Fitch's arrest by the British authorities and the arrival of Daniel's remains in Moscow as a decoy. "I'll need the names and numbers of contacts who can verify what you've just told me," Adamski reminded them as they wrapped up the meeting and accompanied her to the agency's main doors.

"Marissa Peters, Scotland Yard and Captain Rourke of the Glen Creagh police department ought to do it. Our assistant will put it all together for you," Laura replied.

"I can have a first draft of a press release for you by the end of the week. Then we can talk about a hit list of reporters I'll send it to. See you then."

Remington scowled in the wake of Adamski's departure. "All I can say is, I hope you know what you're doing, Laura."

"Of course I don't know what I'm doing, Mr. Steele. But when has that ever stopped us before?"

"You kids better get a move on, or you'll be late for your appointment at Demerest and Associates," Mildred reminded them.

"Thanks, Mildred. At least there's one aspect of the business we can still feel positive about."

Unfortunately, Laura had spoken too soon. She and Remington both realized it the moment they arrived at Jim Demerest's Beverly Hills office and registered the look on his face. It was the look of a man who had a duty to perform, one he found unpleasant, but planned nevertheless to carry through. They exchanged a wary glance as they sat down.

Demerest's greeting was cordial enough. "I'm pleased to see you're recovered and back to work, Mrs. Steele."

"Thank you. It's good to be back. Mr. Steele and I are both anxious to wrap this case up, now that the end's in sight."

"Yes. Well. I'd like to discuss that with you. I think we may have progressed as far as you can take us. Understand, you've done an excellent job; I can't fault your performance in any respect. But in my judgment, it's time we turn the matter over to the SEC."

It was worse than they'd envisioned. The glamour case, the one they were counting on to rehabilitate their reputation, the one that still might serve as their stepping stone into the elite: was that imploding around them, too? Would the shock waves Roselli had set in motion never end?

Professionals that they were, they betrayed neither their surprise nor their chagrin. "Can we ask your reasons?" said Remington.

"I think it's obvious. Your office was ransacked. The notoriety it's stirred up. Your picture was all over the news, Mr. Steele. It can't help but compromise your ability to continue undercover."

"Mr. Demerest, my husband's picture is constantly in the paper. I can assure you that in spite of it, he's seldom recognized when we're on a case."

"People have an odd notion that the head of the agency's a figurehead, rather than a working detective," explained Remington. "Can't think where they've picked it up. Naturally they don't expect to meet me out in the trenches. Besides, I have one of those faces: forgettable…highly unphotogenic. It's rare that a newspaper photograph actually resembles me."

"All that may be true. However, when I assess the risk that Jürgen may recognize you—that's my business, after all, risk assessment—the possibility of failure outweighs the possibility of success. In this situation I'm especially risk-averse, because a failure now would be absolutely devastating to us. Our association ends here, I'm afraid. I'm sorry." And Demerest began to stand up.

Laura had been rapidly formulating a line of argument while he was talking. "It seems to me you're overlooking a critical detail," she said. "Our informant. Adrian Mihalec. Resolving the case hinges on his willingness to cooperate."

Without missing a beat, Remington picked up her theme. "He's skittish, Adrian is. Apt to bolt if he feels threatened. Scare him off, and your chance at Eitschl self-incriminating vanishes with him."

"The reason he approached us in the first place was he doesn't trust the authorities. If the SEC takes over…" Laura trailed off, allowing her statement to speak for itself.

Demerest glanced from her to Remington. "If the SEC will give him a guarantee of immunity from prosecution…and the two of you persuade him it's in his interest to trust them…"

"We'd do our best, that goes without saying. But our influence only goes so far," replied Remington.

"We'd appreciate anything you can do." Again Demerest attempted to rise. "Now, unless there's something else--"

"Mr. Demerest," Laura said suddenly. "Do you have any other objection to our continuing on the case beyond your belief our cover has been compromised?

"None whatever. I meant what I said. You've done a fantastic job."

"Then give us a chance to prove we can mask our identities so well that Eitschl—or anyone else that might've seen Mr. Steele's picture in the paper—will never recognize us."

Demerest leaned back in his chair and regarded her over the steeple he made of his forefingers. "That's quite a proposal, Mrs. Steele. Almost a challenge."

"One I believe you'll find illuminating, if you accept it."

"What exactly did you have in mind?"

"A demonstration. Meet us at the reflecting pool at San Sebastian Park eleven thirty Thursday morning. If we're able to fool you, you retain our services until we've solved the case. If not, we'll walk away without an argument."

A brief silence while they waited for Demerest to render his verdict. From the tail of her eye, Laura could see how still her husband was sitting, almost holding his breath. Her own hands, clenched in her lap, were damp with cold sweat.

Finally Demerest nodded. "It's a fair request. All right, you'll have your chance. I have to warn you, it won't be easy to put one over on me."

"We wouldn't have it any other way," said Remington as they got up to leave.

In the Rabbit on the way back to Century City, he was jubilant. "Excellent work, Laura. Among the most ingenious strategies you've ever devised for saving our bacon." He removed his right hand from the steering wheel to pick up hers and plant a smacking kiss on it.

"That's a switch. From insanity to brilliance in two short hours."

"Yes, well, the method in your madness wasn't quite so plain to me earlier." His brows quirked in puzzlement. "I'm not entirely sure it's plain to me now. How are we going to pull this off?"

"Simple. We've got a little under forty-eight hours to come up with a couple of clever disguises that will make us look totally unlike ourselves but won't stick out like sore thumbs."

"And then what?"

"We give the performance of our lives."

TO BE CONTINUED


	7. Chapter 7

Chapter 7

It was well before the appointed hour when the Steeles, fully costumed and made up, arrived at San Sebastian Park on Thursday.

Remington had been of the opinion that their disguises should be as inventive and flamboyant as possible ("It's a simple form of double reverse psychology. He expects that we'll expect to him to watch for something outrageous, so he'll be fixed on the mundane, which means we ought to be the very opposite"), and he had peppered Laura with suggestions that ranged from construction workers to mounted police. "Street mimes? T'ai Chi instructors? Ambulance drivers?"

She had rejected them all with a firm shake of the head. "What we need is to approach the issue logically. Think. What characteristics about us give away who we are? That's our starting point. We need to play against type if we're going to fool him."

Once they had chosen a strategy, it was easy to develop a list. Remington's disadvantages, at least in executing this masquerade, were his height, his beautifully erect carriage and the air with which he wore his clothes, no matter what he had on. The best camouflage for him was the "bum" attire he'd used on past stakeouts: a grimy old duster, a battered felt hat. Beneath the hat a gray wig would conceal his hair and a drooping handlebar mustache his mouth. Artfully applied lines and shadows would age him; he would affect a stoop and a shuffling walk.

In Laura's case, makeup would be a hindrance rather than a help. She would wear none, exposing the freckles that she normally downplayed. A full-length nun's habit would alter the athleticism of her stride, while the accompanying hood and veil covered her chestnut mane.

The final inspection of her appearance she left to Remington. "Very convincing, except for one detail," was his appraisal. "Keep your eyes lowered whenever possible. And for heaven's sake, try to look demure? I know it's a stretch. But you're far too young to pass for a gimlet-eyed martinet who makes all the men in the parish quake in their boots."

In the parking lot they gazed around cautiously to make sure Demerest's silver Lincoln was nowhere in evidence before emerging from the Rabbit. San Sebastian was busy, unusual for this late in the morning. There were hikers and bikers, joggers and skaters, from a diverse assortment of ages and sexes and nationalities. All the better for the Steeles, for it meant that they would blend in seamlessly with the crowd.

Remington stretched a long arm into the back seat for his props, which consisted of a squeegee, a spray bottle of window cleaner and a roll of paper towels. ""Ready, Mrs. Steele? I'd say we're near on show time."

"Think we'd raise any eyebrows if I kissed you for luck?" Her eyes sparkled behind the wire-rimmed granny glasses she had just perched on her nose.

"I'm more concerned that Mr. Demerest would choose that moment to sail up the driveway."

"Guess I'll have to settle for this." She pressed her index finger to her lips and touched it to his cheek. "See you later." And she set off for a vantage point closer to the reflecting pool.

His eye on the entrance gate, Remington slouched among nearby rows of cars. The picture of a panhandler hoping to score a fast five or ten? He could only keep his fingers crossed. As a finishing touch to his disguise, he had added a pair of brown contacts just before they left the house—relics from his days as Paul Fabrini. Under his breath he practiced over and over, in a southern-American accent, one that would've done Vivien Leigh proud: "Thanks, mister, have a nice day."

At last the moment was upon him. Jim Demerest's Continental was pulling through the gates.

He hustled to meet it and was squirting cleaner onto its windshield before Demerest had shut off the engine. Mostly Remington kept his eyes on what he was doing, but it was difficult to help stealing a covert glance or two at the other man.

Demerest slid from behind the wheel and stood. His cool gray gaze swept the park; one hand went absently to his wallet. "That's fine," he said, and handed over a five dollar bill. "Thank you."

Their fingers touched as Remington accepted the bill and pretended to examine it. "Thanks, mister! Have a nice day!"

Demerest was already moving away without exhibiting the tiniest sign of recognition. Remington's gig was over.

Now it was Laura's turn.

She had stationed herself in an area where the path bisected a wide swath of smooth, green lawn. On one side, small children swarmed a collection of playground equipment beneath the watchful eyes of their mothers. Some kind of exercise class was in progress on the other side, T'ai Chi or yoga, by the looks of things. Strolling between the two, she directed all her energies towards projecting an image of serenity that was the antithesis of her own.

It wasn't long until she spied Demerest walking briskly in her direction. Time to pull off a paradox: she had to move quickly without seeming to, and to accost him deliberately while making it look accidental. Good thing she was rarely burdened by a lack of confidence in her abilities.

They were coming even with one another on the path. His head was up, she noted.

And his eyes were focused on her.

With all the coolness of which she was capable, she squashed her anxiety. Maybe he hadn't recognized her. Maybe he had. If he had, there was nothing she could do about it except face the failure head on.

But part of her was nevertheless braced for the worst, waiting for him to point her out, to call her by name, even to exclaim, "Aha!"

He did none of those things. Instead, his head inclined in a respectful nod. "Good morning, sister."

She never broke character for a second. "Good morning, my son," she murmured.

He had just about passed her, but she halted him with a hand on his arm—a bold move she knew Remington would appreciate hugely when she related it to him later. "My son, may I give you something?"

Startled, he took the prayer card she held out without bothering to look at it. "Thank you, sister."

As soon as he had rounded a bend in the path, she tore off the glasses, hiked up her skirts and raced for the Rabbit, where Remington was waiting. He had already divested himself of hat, wig, contacts and mustache, stripped off the duster, and cleaned his face of makeup. Now he moved behind her to unzip the habit while she doffed veil and hood. "Laura, I'm not altogether comfortable doing this," he announced.

"You should be used to undressing me by now, Mr. Steele." She tossed the discarded headgear into the Rabbit's bag seat, then retrieved a small bottle from her handbag and began to smooth foundation over her freckles in quick strokes.

"It's not you, it's what you're wearing. The implications are enough to make a former Catholic schoolboy positively queasy."

He held the mirror so she could apply eye makeup and lipstick. "What time is it?" she asked.

"Twenty-nine past."

"Not a minute to spare. How do I look?"

"Perfect, as always. Shall we jog, Mrs. Steele? Lest by tardiness we forfeit the advantage we've gained so far?"

It was at eleven thirty-three by the clock that they strolled up to Demerest, hand in hand. He wore an air of expectancy as he greeted them. "Well? When do we begin?"

Laura smiled. "I'm afraid we've been less than up front with you, Mr. Demerest."

"The demonstration's over," Remington added. "Except for a few minor loose ends, that is."

The fiver Demerest had given him earlier was in the front pocket of his jeans; always the showman, he presented it with a flourish. "Thanks, mister." He was speaking in a slow Southern drawl. "Have a nice day."

Even as surprise dawned in Demerest's widened eyes, Laura was chiming in. "Meet anyone else on the way here? Someone who gave you something?"

Interesting that he needed a moment to mull it over. "Well, a prayer card."

"Like this one?" And she held out its duplicate.

Demerest, mouth open but speechless, looked from her to Remington and back again.

"St. Michael the Archangel," she explained. "The patron saint of policemen…and, we'd like to think, private detectives. With our compliments."

In almost the same gesture as earlier, it passed from her hand to his. He gazed down at it, shaking his head. "Well, I'll be."

The Steeles waited for him to elaborate.

"I'll be," he repeated more loudly. They saw his smile when he raised his head. "Mr. and Mrs. Steele, what can I say? I'm impressed. You pulled the wool pretty far down over my eyes, both of you."

"I take it we've also removed your misgivings about the case?" asked Remington.

"Removed them? You've obliterated them! I wouldn't trust it in any hands but yours after this. And I apologize for questioning your expertise for even a second."

But Remington waved the regrets away. "Say no more. You were merely protecting your business—a circumstance we're more than familiar with these days."

They spent a few minutes discussing the game plan they'd adopt when Mihalec contacted the Steeles. After Demerest had gone, Remington scooped Laura into an embrace that lifted her right off the ground. "Not a shabby day's work, eh? And all before lunch time!"

Arms wrapped around his neck, she kissed him soundly. "Love the Southern accent. I've never heard you use it before. Where on earth did you pick it up?"

"Laura, I'm astonished. Do you really have to ask?"

"Sorry. I don't know what I was thinking."

In elation he swung their clasped hands between them as they headed for the Rabbit. Laura's spirits, by contrast, were plummeting. "Help me clarify, Mr. Steele. I'm coming back to earth with a thud. What did we do here, after all? Earned the right to keep working the case. But there's no guarantee we'll succeed in the end. It really is too soon to celebrate."

"Nonsense. Think how much has changed since last week. Think how much has changed this morning!"

She shot him a dubious glance.

"It's only a matter of time before Eitschl'll be up to his old tricks," he went on. "He won't be able to help himself. Greed is a powerful motivator, no matter the attendant risks. Mark my words, he'll be in touch with Mihalec sooner rather than later for a fresh round of stock raids. And then you and I, my dear love, will nab him."

"Think so?"

"I know so. When has our tape-and-photograph routine ever failed us?"

"Never."

"You see? Cause for celebration right there. It's not a question of whether we'll catch him, only when. It's close. I can feel it."

It was then that she came to a stop and drew him to her with his arms around his waist. "Mr. Steele, there are times when it hits home to me that I married a genuine, eternal, cock-eyed optimist. This is one of them."

"And that's a bad thing?" In his eyes was a combination of amusement and tenderness.

She held him close and leaned her cheek against his chest. "No, it's not a bad thing," she whispered. "Not a bad thing at all."

* * *

That optimistic mood of Remington's buoyed the entire agency into the following week. His refusal to surrender to discouragement was their lifeline, for outside circumstances hadn't improved much at all. Clients continued to cancel, albeit in fewer numbers; new accounts were more difficult to win over than they'd been previously. The Steeles and Mildred were working harder almost than they ever had to sell their skills and expertise. Yet the returns were scanty, the response anemic.

Their hope remained pinned on the public relations effort Stacie Adamski was assembling on their behalf. She dropped by Tuesday morning with the final draft of her story, along with the list of media to which she would release it. Laura scanned the names with an approving eye. "_The Times, The Santa Monica Daily Press, The Beverly Hills Weekly_, _The Canyon News_. And you already have the _Trib _on board?"

"The managing editor and I go way back. Art Donovan. He taught a couple of my J-school courses."

Laura had read a little further down the list. "Radio. That's a surprise. You think it'll do us any good?"

"Only a handful of stations. I like KNTL-AM the best. 'NewsTalk L.A.', they style themselves. The station manager's Andy Travis, and he's committed to running the story in a couple of prime dayparts."

"When do you propose to begin circulating it, the story?" asked Remington.

"If I have your approval, I'll start contacting the media as soon as I get back to the office."

"Consider it approved," Laura said. "And thanks. It goes without saying how much we appreciate your speed in getting us launched."

The meeting over, the Steeles repaired to their own offices and devoted themselves to what amounted to busy work. Lunch time came and went. The phone was silent, the reception area empty save Mildred. The dull day wore on.

The arrival of the mail provided a welcome distraction from the tedium, at least for Remington. "Laura, have a look at this," he called through their connecting door. It was open, the signal they'd agreed upon long ago that she could be interrupted in what she was doing.

'This' turned out to be a typewritten letter. "It seems we have another 'Remington Steele' sighting on our hands," he said.

Last week's disaster had pushed the mystifying package from The Camden Original Knit Company onto the back burner for all of them. Mildred had done no more than follow up with the senders of the sweaters, who had repeated nearly verbatim the story from the note on their invoice. They insisted to her that Mr. Steele had, indeed, visited their shop in June; Bob Teasdale, who had taken Mr. Steele's measurements, described him as a tall, dark-haired man with an accent. There the matter had rested. Not even the disquieting photo of Laura could turn it into a high priority. The agency had too many other kettles of fish to fry to worry about an innocuous, isolated incident.

Innocuous it may have been, but the incident was no longer isolated. "This is more or less a thank you to Remington Steele for delivering a lecture on the criminal mind to a Sociology of Deviance course two weeks ago at Framingham State College in Massachusetts," remarked Laura. "From a Professor Eugene Maltsev." She lowered the sheet just far enough to regard him over its edge. "At last, someone's recognized your true calling."

"Very funny."

"No, really. You could do an entire series on the Sociology of Deviance. I'm sure there's an endless supply of material from your previous lives. Take Shannon, for example--"

He wore a sour expression as he snatched the letter out of her hands and skimmed it again. "Suppose we start taking it seriously."

"Developing a lecture series?"

"This. He waved the paper in front of her nose. "It's the second time in less than a week that my name has popped up in connection with a place I've never been and people I've never met."

"It's not that I'm not taking it seriously. Our plate's been too full to deal with it. But you're right, twice is too much. I'll have Mildred get in touch with this Professor Maltsev and with those people in Maine again. It'll be easy to enough to prove that whoever they met, it wasn't you."

While she was speaking, he had gone on to tear open the next envelope in the stack and perused the invitation it contained. Once finished, he tucked it into her hand. "Here's something else you may find perplexing."

The invitation read:

_Michael Albert Molinsky and Grace Whitney Kapetanek request the honor of your presence as they are united as husband and wife at Saint Ambrose Catholic Church,1281 N. Fairfax Avenue, West Hollywood, at four o' clock in the afternoon of Saturday, October ninth, nineteen eighty-seven. A reception will be held immediately following, _

"Oh, my, Crunch and Whitney," Laura grinned. "And she's even using her real name! I'm impressed. Seems you were right, Mr. Steele. The hype _is _only on the professional level."

He was picking up a yellow manila envelope, the kind that fastened with a metal clasp. It was stamped 'Personal and confidential' and 'Photos – Do Not Bend', but was otherwise unmarked. The neatly typed address label was directed to him. "When will you learn to trust my instincts in these situations, Laura?"

This patently didn't rate a response, though she rolled her eyes. "I wonder what Mr. Molinsky thinks of it."

"I'll wager he's not thinking of much of anything over at Shady Meadows Rest Home besides his next meal."

"I suppose we'll have to put in an appearance? I know how much you like weddings, Mr. Steele."

"Why, yes, Mrs. Steele, I must confess I do. I'm looking forward to it, actually. I've always had rather a soft spot for the fair Ms. Chambers."

"Just be sure and steer clear of Dangerous Darryl, the Velvet Vandal. It'll crush him to find out _you're_ the marrying kind."

A hoarse, strangled cry rang out in the room, silencing her. It was a sound unlike any she had ever heard him make. "Remington?" she gasped. "What is it?" And she was at his side in an instant.

Too late, though: he had already whipped his chair violently around to face the window. He still clutched the manila envelope, which he squeezed tightly in his fist and then tossed away with a ferocity that seemed out of proportion. He sat there, hunched over as if in pain, breathing hard. For a terrifying interval she was absolutely sure he was having a heart attack.

She put her hands on his shoulders, trying to turn him, but he was resisting and she couldn't budge him an inch. "What is it?"

At last he swiveled around to her. When she saw his expression, she fell back a step. His face was distorted, wild with an emotion she couldn't name. Rage? Terror? His blue eyes were blazing yet unfocused, not seeing her.

She gazed at him, her face own face drained of color. "_What_?"

He looked down at something in his left hand and up at her. He laid it on the desk's surface and slid it toward her.

Gingerly she picked it up, her eyes never leaving his. It was a photograph. Her heart suddenly began to slam in hard painful strokes as she turned it over and forced herself to look.

The image was of her, lying on her back on the floor of her office, eyes closed, head tipped to one side.

A horrible roaring started in her ears; she never knew that the photo had fallen from her nerveless fingers. One hand went to her mouth while the other groped for the edge of the desk and grabbed it hard. "What is this?" she whispered.

"Roselli's calling card. Though I'd have thought the actual experience of finding you unconscious sufficient to get his point across."

"What point?"

"That he can get to you any time he wants, mistreat you any way he wants, and I can't do a bloody thing to stop it."

She was shaking her head slowly back and forth. "Remington, there's a nuance here that escapes me."

"He took this after he attacked you."

That much was obvious. She looked at him, bewildered.

It was as if the words were shaken out of him. "Laura…he _posed_ you for it."

The temperature in the room seemed to drop twenty degrees. She was suddenly so cold that she wrapped her arms around herself and tucked her hands into her armpits. "What do you mean?"

"Would you have fallen naturally in that position, flat on your back? And he moved you afterwards." He bent and retrieved the photo, set it face up on the desk. "This--" he gestured toward it, "--this isn't the way I found you. You were curled on your left side. I turned you onto your back. And your hair."

"What about it?"

"It was loose. That band you were wearing to hold your ponytail—they can't slide off by themselves, can they? _He_ took it off after he snapped the picture."

Laura swallowed. "So he didn't hit me and then…leave me be."

"So it would appear."

"But…" She could hardly bring herself to say it. "Why take pictures?"

His voice was low and furious. "Because I couldn't protect you that day, that's why. And he's saying there'll be a next time. Because he's rubbing my face in it, the bastard!"

She reached for him; he shook her off, flinging himself headlong out of the chair. He strode around the desk and headed for the door.

"What are you doing?" she cried.

He barely halted to snatch up his jacket from the couch. The whole room shook from the force with which he slammed the door behind him.

In the silence that followed his departure, Laura stood where he'd left her. She couldn't have moved if she wanted to. It was as if a cyclone had touched down out of a clear blue sky, wreaked untold destruction, and then withdrawn as suddenly as it had appeared, robbing her of strength and will.

For a second she debated going after Remington—he couldn't have gotten very far—but decided against it. For too many days in a row, they'd been operating in crisis mode. It had stretched him thin, emotionally speaking; he could use the time away. They had progressed enough in their relationship that she wasn't worried that he'd walked out for good. Once he'd sorted it out on his own, he would be back.

As for herself, her flesh was still crawling with revulsion. There was something particularly cold-blooded in what Roselli had done and how he'd revealed it to them. Was this what he'd really been like beneath the exterior he'd projected those first days of her marriage to Remington? She'd read him then as bluff and impetuous, a little too full of machismo, overly confident of his own sex appeal, but basically straightforward. How could she have missed this twisted streak? Had her—thankfully--abortive, misguided attraction to him clouded her judgment so completely?

The memory made her want nothing so much than to hurry home and take a very long, very hot shower.

Instead she turned her attention to the envelope Remington had thrown from him. Work, of course: always a palliative for her. Besides, the envelope might hold a clue that her husband in his outburst had overlooked.

She was smoothing it out on top of his desk when the intercom buzzed. "Yes, Mildred?"

"Mrs. Steele…everything okay?"

"Fine. Did Mr. Steele happen to tell you where he's going?"

"No, but he asked me to call Fred and tell him to get here on the double." There was a brief pause. "Honey, you sure everything's all right?"

"Positive. Hold my calls for the time being, unless it's Mr. Steele."

Focusing on the task at hand, she examined the address label. Nothing distinctive there. Nor was there anything unusual about the stamps that identified the package as confidential and containing photos. The envelope was the kind sold at most office supply stores, without any special marks to indicate its size, or the name of its manufacturer…

No special marks.

She looked again to make certain she had spotted what she thought she had.

The envelope bore a twenty-five-cent postage stamp, but no cancellation imprint or date. There was nothing whatever to show that it had been handled by the United States Post Office.

Mildred glanced up at her inquiringly as she approached the reception desk. "Mildred, who delivered today's mail?"

"Jonas from the mail room, just like every day."

"Any hand deliveries? Anyone from the building drop something off?"

When Mildred shook her head, Laura held the envelope out to her. "Could this have come from the mail room?"

"I don't see how."

"Why not?"

" 'Cause they mark every piece of mail that comes through. Time in, time out. That's how they keep tabs on the kids down there, make sure they're not goofing off on the job."

"Thanks." Laura was already headed back towards Remington's office.

An envelope without a postage cancellation or the imprimatur from the building's mail room that would release it for delivery.

Yet it had landed on Mildred's desk with everything else.

It had to have arrived by hand.

Whose hand? Had Roselli himself brought it here? Was he hiding in close proximity, as Remington had suggested, spying on them?

It wasn't much of stretch to conclude the answer was yes.

Which meant this envelope, the best evidence they'd stumbled across to date to confirm his presence, ought to be locked up where he couldn't snatch it back.

Absently she thrust her hand inside it, making sure it was empty, before she filed it in the one cabinet in her office to which she alone had the key. It was force of habit, to tell the truth; she didn't really expect to be rewarded as she was by the discovery of another photograph.

It took a full minute before she could summon the nerve to look.

And then Laura Steele, veteran detective, who could without turning a hair inspect the corpse of a shooting victim after it had spent four days in the Pacific; who hadn't shrunk for a second from pressing the hand of a dead abbott to her midriff in an effort to con a group of bankers into believing it was Remington's; who calmly rifled dead men's pockets for the most inconsequential of clues, did something entirely out of character: raced for the bathroom, and was sick.

Roselli had sent them a post-mortem photograph.

Its subject was Gladys Lynch.

* * *

Remington, in the meantime, was in the back seat of the limo, en route to Burbank.

Since relaying his instructions to Fred, he hadn't spoken a single word. It wasn't that chatter was required; the only time their driver made small talk was in response to the Steeles or Mildred drawing him out. But he and Fred had established a pattern over the years. A long ride like this, if the two of them were alone, usually resulted in interesting conversation on any number of topics. There was a lot to Fred, Remington had found, once Fred opened up. He liked to afford Fred that opportunity whenever possible.

Not today.

Tucked into the waistband of Remington's trousers, concealed by his jacket, was the new gun. They had made a stop at Windsor Square for the sole purpose of picking it up. Now he could feel its metal, cold even through his shirt, its heft solid and reliable and death-dealing.

He was thinking of nothing at all.

In front of Websters Gun World, he leaned down to the driver's-side window. "I expect I'm stating the obvious in what I'm about to say. But a breath of this to Mrs. Steele means your job, mate."

Fred's deadpan expression never wavered. "Understood, sir."

Although he couldn't claim to be an habitué of target ranges. Remington had a passing familiarity with the drill. It was one of the first photo ops Laura had arranged after he'd stepped into Steele's shoes: him equipped with safety glasses and earmuffs, bluffing a skill in marksmanship he didn't possess. A moment immortalized now for posterity on his office wall. And, of course, there was the mandatory instruction he'd had to undergo in order to qualify for the permit Laura insisted he obtain. Remington Steele had to have legal clearance for carrying a weapon, even if he seldom used it. It was as simple as that.

Was it his imagination, or was the attendant at the range, a young guy in his twenties, staring at him a trifle doubtfully as he made his preparations? "Need any help?" the attendant asked.

"Thanks, no. I'm set."

Remington waited until the young man had ambled off. Picking up the Colt, he weighed it in his hand, his gaze measuring the target at the end of his lane.

Then he flicked off the safety, braced himself, and, eyes narrowed behind the glasses, began to fire.

TO BE CONTINUED


	8. Chapter 8

Chapter 8

It wasn't until well after six o'clock that Laura finally left the office for home.

Ostensibly she'd spent the remainder of the day immersed in financials, since there was always some task she needed to complete in that area of the business. In reality, she'd been waiting for Remington. She would have to break the news about Gladys Lynch to him sometime; her preference was to do it at the agency. Everything in her balked at bringing that unspeakable photograph home with her.

But he never came back.

Maneuvering through heavy cross-town traffic without the photograph, she uneasily anticipated his reaction to it. She knew what to expect in general terms. He harbored boundless contempt and loathing for men who hurt women, regarded them as the lowest scum on earth. But what would that mean in specifics? The photo of her, Laura, already had him balancing on the edge. Would this new statement of Roselli's prove to be Remington's tipping point?

Any way she looked at it, they had another bumpy ride ahead of them.

The Auburn sat in its accustomed place in the garage, but the house was empty when she arrived at Windsor Square. Oppressed by the loneliness and silence, she went through to the kitchen. On a normal evening the room would've been cheery, full of warmth and good smells, with Remington the creative force at its center. She felt a stab of unreasoning anger at Roselli for shattering the companionship they would have otherwise enjoyed tonight. One more item to add to the list of things he'd robbed from them over the last two weeks.

Although Remington had tried with infinite patience to initiate her into the mysteries of the Aga, she remained intimidated by it. In any case, tonight she was too tired to bother. After finishing a microwaved Lean Cuisine from her personal stash—he refused even to buy them—she showered and went to bed. It had been a long day.

Perhaps forty-five minutes later, she heard the limo pull into the driveway. The front door opened and Remington let himself into the house.

He didn't come up right away, so she tracked his movements downstairs by the sound of his footsteps. They told her he was making sure their home was secure, the way he did every night without fail. Strange how he'd fallen into the habit so naturally, all on his own. She doubted that he was imitating actions he'd seen in the ramshackle cottages in which he'd spent his childhood. And Daniel was the kind of father who gave lessons in breaching defenses, not shoring them up.

But maybe it wasn't so strange. It struck her suddenly that it was a throwback to the past, hers and his, reminiscent of a routine he'd established during her first months at the loft. Regardless of the hour, he always made a round of the windows, the bathroom, the closets, even under her bed, before he left her. It had taken repeated, strenuous objections from her—she'd be fine! she could take care of herself!—to persuade him to abandon it.

Finally he ascended the stairs. He was walking softly, probably supposing her asleep. She watched him, a darker shadow among the other shadows, slip into the room and cross to the opposite side of it. There was a rustle that she identified as him emptying his jacket pockets of wallet, change and keys, then the faint chink of metal upon metal as he transferred them to the top of his dresser.

She sat up and switched on the lamp.

Squinting against the sudden brightness, he turned. "Didn't mean to wake you."

"It's okay. I was up." She noted the shadow of his beard, pronounced against his fair skin, and the lines of fatigue around his eyes.

"You all right?" he said.

"Fine. What about you?"

"Great."

Conversation died. He lowered himself to the edge of the armchair that stood near the fireplace and sat, back bent, elbows resting on his knees, wrists dangling. It wasn't a position she'd ever seen him take before. "Have you eaten?" she said.

He raised his head. "What? No. No appetite. Later, perhaps." His gaze lingered on her, sharpened, as if he were really seeing her for the first time since he'd entered. "Is the headache back? It that why you're in bed so early?

"Just tired."

There was another pause. A lock of hair had fallen over his forehead; absently he brushed it aside. "_A Touch of Evil_," he said.

She knew him too well to mistake this for a non sequitur.

"Orson Welles. Charlton Heston, Janet Leigh. Universal. 1958. It's what's been running over and over in my head. Considered one of the most technically brilliant films ever made because of its opening sequence. I used to think so, too. Not anymore. It's…vile. The premise, the plot, all of it. Vile."

"What's the plot?"

"A lawman gone bad uses the wife of an honest police official to stop him from exposing his crimes. Endangers the wife…hurts her."

"You're doing it again, Remington."

His lifted eyebrows asked the question.

"Letting Roselli push your buttons. It's the morning at the castle all over again."

He thought it over and shook his head. "Farther back than that. Our fisticuffs in Glen Creagh the day after we arrived. I told you I'd beaten him, but never how he provoked me in the first place." It was obvious from his expression how repugnant the memory was. "He said that my marrying you simply to keep from being deported—or persuading you to marry me—made me lower than a pimp. The implication about you being clear, I'd imagine."

"Crystal," she said dryly.

"Of course he knows how to bait me, Laura. I'll wager he realized it within two seconds of following you into our hotel room in Las Hadas. It didn't need a bloody genius to figure it out." He rubbed his shadowed eyes. "I suppose in a perverse way we ought to be thankful he still considers me worth baiting. Who knows what harm he might do you if he gets tired of playing cat's paw?"

It was then that she felt the iron control she'd been exercising over her thoughts weaken. The unconscious irony in his words had struck the blow. Roselli had proven today the extent of the violence he was willing to inflict. Clamping down on her memories all afternoon and evening had kept that knowledge at bay so that she could continue to function. It was her usual method of coping as a strong woman who leaned only on herself.

But now she was tired of going it alone. She wanted Remington. She didn't think she could stand another second of not having his arms around her.

She said, "Maybe you could come over here for a while, huh?" She had to fight to keep her voice casual, to conceal the tremor that wanted to take over.

He heard it anyway. For a moment he only looked at her. Then in one forceful motion he pushed up from the chair, propelling himself forward, practically lunging for her. Beside her on the bed, he enfolded her in an embrace so close it was almost painful.

She let herself cling to him. Yes, there was shelter--comfort, too--in the warmth and strength of the long body wrapped around hers, in the steady beat of his heart, in the familiar sound of his breathing. Something he had said not long ago came to her: 'We're better together. We have been, almost from the beginning.' She thought that she had never recognized it with such clarity before. Thank goodness they were learning to act on it, even though, after all these months of marriage, they still weren't very good at admitting they needed each other.

When he finally loosened his hold, it was to plumb her eyes with one of the most penetrating glances she'd ever received from him. "What is it you're not telling me?" he asked.

And so, taking both his hands, gazing steadily up into his face, she described in a few dry sentences her discovery of the photo of Gladys Lynch.

The silence stretched out while they sat there, the space between them prickling with tension.

He said: "Go and get it, Laura."

"I can't."

"Why not?"

"I left it at the office."

"On purpose. Hiding it from me?"

"Never. I…couldn't stand to have it here. I'll show you tomorrow, if you still want to see it." She couldn't suppress a shudder. "Trust me on this one. You don't want to."

His expression had darkened into anger by now. "It might've been you. You know it, don't you?"

"I know."

"I'd have stumbled into your office that morning, and that's what I would've have found."

"I know…"

"Not unconscious, not a concussion, though that was bad enough. And I'd have had to live with the memory of the sight for the rest of my life."

"Remington--"

"—And why didn't he do it when he had the chance, eh? Ah, now, there's the question. Why her, and not you? A whim? A freak he'd got into his head, another way to toy with us? Who's to say he won't change his mind tomorrow, or next week? Who's to say he's not planning it right now--?"

"--Don't!"

Her fierceness brought him up short. Despite their clasped hands, something almost adversarial had stiffened their posture towards one another and ignited their flashing eyes. In a deliberate effort to defuse it, she closed hers briefly and glanced away. Almost at the same moment, he released her hands.

But it was only so he could sweep her into his arms with another of those strong, swift movements, and then lower her beneath him to the mattress.

She caught her breath. He was kissing her face with an intensity that was almost feverish, one arm supporting her, the other hand seeking her body's softness. It took her a beat or two to adjust. Then she clasped him to her and opened her mouth to him, shifting to accommodate his caresses, caressing him in her turn.

It was what they both needed. In a very short while she was taking his hand and guiding it beneath the bodice of her nightgown. And when the time came for him to shed his shirt and trousers, they worked in tandem to unfasten buttons and belt buckle and zipper.

At one point he raised himself on his elbow so that he could look down at her; his free hand smoothed her hair back from her face. So intent was his gaze, it was almost as if he were memorizing her features, or as if he were seeing them afresh after a long time away. What she didn't know, and he couldn't put into words, was that he was doing it partly for reassurance, partly out of relief. He'd painted a vivid picture in his mind earlier, imagining her Roselli's victim in place of Gladys Lynch. This was his way of erasing it. He didn't smile, but his lips soundlessly formed the words, "I love you."

From their climax they came down gradually, cradled in each other's arms. At length Remington kissed her—her eyelids, her forehead, her throat—and rolled onto his back beside her. But instead of drawing her to him, as he usually did, he put his hands behind his head and stared at the ceiling. "I've behaved like a selfish ass, haven't I?" he said after a while.

She studied his profile. "Not that I've noticed."

"Taking off without a word. Forgetting you're the one who's borne the brunt of it all. I'm sorry."

"But you've been bearing it, too. What hurts me, hurts you. And vice versa."

"Does it?"

" 'The two shall become one', remember?"

"This one's not been holding up his end of the partnership the way he ought just lately."

She reached out a hand to stroke his chest. "I think you should let me be the judge of that."

But he didn't relax. The tautness of his cheek and jaw matched the tension in his body. "What happened today changes everything, you realize," he said.

"I know."

""I didn't ask for it, it's the last thing I'd have wanted, but it has. Before it was simply about finding him. Now it's finding him before he can get to you."

She waited for him to continue.

"There's a theme that recurs time and again in American cinema. Frontier justice. A man's right to protect and avenge his own. Eastwood, _The Outlaw-Josey Wales. Death Wish, _Charles Bronson, Vincent Gardenia, Paramount, 1974. _Walking Tall._ _Cornered, _Dick Powell, Walter Slezak, RKO, 1945. I could go on, but you get the general idea."

"You're saying you want to be a vigilante?"

"I'm saying he'll never lay a finger on you again. Before God, he won't. I'll do whatever it takes to stop him, the filthy, murdering--" He broke off and turned his head to look at her. His eyes were like blue flint. "I mean what I say, Laura. You'd better know it now. Whatever it takes."

She needed no convincing. He was a gentle man at heart, thanks to his temperament, Daniel's tutelage and by his own choice. Hot-tempered, true, but when he blew up at her, it was into verbal pyrotechnics. How he could yell, when he wanted to! But that was the end of it. In all the time she'd known him, he'd never touched her with anything but love, no matter how angry he was.

But there had been a few glimpses over the years of another side of him, one from which circumstances could call forth an instinctual violence. Leaping at a mob protection man in a cheap hotel room, heedless of the guns pointed at him, when the goon brushed her bare shoulder in a thinly veiled sexual threat. Fighting dirty to take down Carl, the man who'd attempted to shoot her to death. Serving the Whitechapel Slasher, Bradford Galt, in much the same way, even kicking the other man when he was already down to retaliate for Galt's knocking her unconscious.

And, she didn't doubt, beating the daylights out of Roselli in a muddy dooryard in Glen Creagh.

Other scenes rose before her as well, not witnessed firsthand but imagined, disturbing but accurate. Remington goaded past endurance by the sight of a bruise on Anna's cheek; lying in wait in the darkened dining room at Club 10 for Raymond Marleau to appear; aiming the agency gun, preparing to fire at his rival…

Oh, yes. He was fully capable of keeping his promise to kill Roselli, if it came to that.

It wouldn't. She would make sure of it. "We may be closer to finding him than we thought," she said calmly. "That envelope of his? It doesn't have any postage marks on it, only an uncancelled twenty-five-cent stamp, which means it didn't come through the post office. And get this. Mildred says our mail room records the time on every piece of mail as they process it. Roselli's envelope doesn't have any notes on it. Yet the mail room dropped it off to us today."

He turned to face her, his intent expression a sign that she'd distracted him from the dark side temporarily. "Which means he got access to the mail room and slipped it in somehow?"

"Not an easy feat if you don't work in the building, considering all visitors have to be buzzed in and sign in and out at the reception desk."

"But child's play for someone who does work in the building." After a moment's reflection, Remington snapped his fingers. "Of course! That's how he's done it. He's gotten some kind of job there!"

"Right under our noses the whole time. The mail room or security would be my guess. If my memory's right, and I wasn't just dreaming, he _was_ wearing a uniform that day. So he could be either one."

"I'd lay odds it's security. After hours…few to no witnesses…He could slip in and out of the agency as often as he pleased with no one the wiser." He smiled grimly. "He's clever, I'll give him that. But not as clever as he thinks he is."

"I figure we can stop by the management company tomorrow morning and check out the personnel records. If we're right, they'll have his address. Remington, in less than twenty-four hours from now we'll be turning the tables—invading _his_ home ground, wherever that is."

"No, _you_ won't."

There was no mistaking his meaning. It triggered a moment of ominous silence.

"I sincerely hope you intend to re-phrase that statement. Some point in the next five seconds would be good," she said.

"Laura, what did I just say? What part of 'you're not going near him' don't you understand'?

"Who's going to stop me?"

If his jaw had been tense before, now it was rock hard. "Bloody wonderful. Let's regress to adolescent rebelliousness, shall we?"

"And knuckle-dragging chauvinism, while we're at it. Don't you _ever_ tell me what I can or can't do." She jabbed her forefinger several times at his breastbone for emphasis.

"You're not going. That's final. I'll lock you in this house and hide the keys if that's what it takes to keep you here."

"Mr. Steele, so far in this marriage there hasn't been a precedent for kicking you out of bed. But you're tempting me to set one."

"Am I?"

"I don't need your help to find or capture Roselli. I'm perfectly capable of handling it on my own."

"Excellent, yes, thank you for the reminder, Mrs. Steele." In one furious motion he threw the covers back and sat up. "Though it's hardly necessary. You're so diligent about rubbing it in at every opportunity, how little you need me." By now he had leapt out of bed and was scouring a drawer for a pair of pajamas bottoms. "Last week certainly proved your skill at handling Roselli on your own, didn't it? A concussion, headaches and nightmares being the result. But forge ahead anyway, by all means. Who am I to try and stop you?"

For the second time in the same day, he stormed off, away from her.

She lay in bed just long enough to bring her seething emotions under control. Then she went in search of him.

His retreat was the last place she looked, the black leather Eames sofa in the living room. He didn't stir an inch as she crossed the room and crouched on the floor beside him.

"Remington."

He didn't reply.

"Remington," she said again. "This isn't doing either of us any good. It's got to stop, and it's got to stop now."

He kept his eyes fixed stubbornly on the ceiling. "What does?"

"This attitude of yours. It's gone on way too long. And it isn't like you."

"Perhaps it is."

"Is what?"

"Like me. More than you know."

"I know you pretty well, and I've never seen you act like this."

"Because I've taken care not to. But perhaps I've hated it all along, looking on, hands tied, while the girl I've loved puts herself at risk over and over again. Perhaps I've swallowed it, put a smiling face on it, because I'd no right to object."

She waited for the punch line, for him to turn to her, eyes a-twinkle, and explain the joke. But he lay motionless.

"You're serious," she said slowly.

"Deadly," he agreed.

"But you--" She stopped and put her hands to her forehead, as if it were throbbing again with headache. This sudden rush of confusion was almost as bad. "I don't get it. From the very beginning, you've taken it in stride that the work can be dangerous for me. That's how it looked to me, anyway. And since when do you have a problem telling me you disapprove of something?"

"What good would it have done? I'd never been able to give you the other words you needed to hear. And what was I to you without them? An employee. Your partner. Your friend. No more than that. You'd have taken my head off if I'd been honest—either that, or brushed me aside as if I didn't count."

"Of course you count. You've always counted."

"Not in the ways that matter."

"So…all this time, when you said you trusted my instincts, and to look after you and myself when there's trouble…you really didn't. You think the same as the rest of them, the men who wouldn't hire me in the old days because I'm a woman--I'm in over my head and need rescuing."

"No, I don't. Not even close." Swiftly he swung his legs around and sat up. "It's two entirely different things. Why is it you can't separate them? You're a brilliant detective, a smart, savvy business woman, you're tough and capable and can take care of yourself. Okay? I wouldn't have it otherwise. But you're also my wife. And that ought to mean I have a say when you're deliberately courting danger. The right to voice my objections, even if I don't act on them. To keep you safe when it's warranted. But you won't let me. Can't you understand what that does to a man?"

There was more pain than rage in his voice, and she bowed her head as she acknowledged it to herself. Was every marriage like this, she wondered, or was it unique to theirs, the constant feeling they were picking their way through terrain mined with hidden explosives? That familiar ground could shift beneath their feet at any moment, revealing a hostile, alien landscape for which they were completely unprepared?

At least she could say one thing. She was getting the honesty for which she'd always yearned from him, and plenty of it.

Too bad that right now it resembled a genie that would've been better left in the bottle.

But her anger with him was receding. That didn't mean that she hadn't had just about enough of his rampant overprotectiveness, or that she planned to put up with it. But she thought she understood it. He'd been nothing short of wonderful over the past two weeks, unfailingly tender, strong and supportive, his entire being focused, seemingly, on her welfare. It was the side of him he'd first revealed when the Enterprow Foundation blew up her house. The side that had opened her eyes to the fact that she loved him.

But it couldn't have been easy on him. What an understatement that was! Of course it wasn't easy. His worst enemy had returned with a vengeance to threaten what he held dear—and was pulling it off with an expertly calculated mixture of cold-blooded malice and contempt guaranteed to send Remington off the deep end. No wonder the chinks in her husband's armor were beginning to show. It was a testament to his strength of character that they'd held up this long under the stress.

And he deserved some credit from her. More than that: he'd earned it by his behavior over the years. Competitive though they'd been, he'd followed her lead and respected her decisions—most of the time---and praised her skills ungrudgingly—practically all of the time. Since they'd married, he'd begun to express his pride in her even more openly. His throwing his weight around now wasn't the result of some latent male chauvinism suddenly manifesting itself. She could recognize that much.

He loved her. He was scared to death of losing her. And he was telling her so in the language that came most naturally to him, the only one he knew.

That was why, when she answered him, it was with more gentleness than she ordinarily would have in an argument over their respective rights and roles in the business, in their marriage.

"You do keep me safe," she said softly. She reached for his hand and interlaced her fingers with his. "You've kept me safe for years. And I do need you. I don't know what I'd do without you. Literally. I don't. Maybe I need more practice in showing it."

"Wait here tomorrow while I go after him. That's all I'm asking."

"I can't."

"I rest my case." He began to disengage himself from her grasp.

"No, Remington, wait." She held on tightly, preventing him from moving away. "Listen. Protecting me—you can't do it by wrapping me up in cotton wool and hiding me away. It won't work. Don't try. Just…be here for me, like you always have. Like you were when you were taking care of me last week. Like you are this minute, mad as hell at yourself because deep down you're convinced you should've been able to stop him."

"He hurt you, Laura. He put his hands on you when you were—when you couldn't--" It was as if he choked on finishing that sentence; he had to clear his throat before he could manage the next. "How do you think that makes me feel?

"I know exactly how you feel. I love you, don't forget. And he's had you in his sights ever since he came on the scene, trying to destroy you. He knew all along he might be sending you to your death that night at Paddington station and coerced you into it regardless. I won't ever forgive him for that."

It was the look in his eyes that told her the tide of the battle had turned. At last she was getting through to him. "I never knew you felt that way," he said wonderingly. "Why didn't you tell me?"

"I guess I thought it was obvious. I have as much cause to hate him as you do. And as much right to revenge. No one's going to take away the satisfaction of catching him, not even you. I'm going with you tomorrow." In a rare overflow of emotion, she kissed his hand and laid her cheek against it. "Please…try and understand why."

He drew in a deep breath, visibly wavering.

"Please," she said again. "Please. Before it eats you up inside. I can't stand what he's doing to you."

His arms had come around her before she finished; they lifted her from the floor. In silence he nestled her into his embrace and cupped her face in his hand. In silence he kissed her mouth, softly and for a long time, while she clung to his neck and kissed him back. Still silent, unsmiling, he touched his lips to her face as he had when they'd made love, her eyelids and temples and forehead, the tip of her nose and her throat.

Then he spoke over her head into the darkness.

"We'll go together," he said.

TO BE CONTINUED


	9. Chapter 9

CHAPTER 9

Across a table in an unoccupied office at A. Hastings Property Management, Remington looked at Laura. "This is it," he said.

She returned the look over the personnel files that lay on top of the table between them. This_ was_ it: they were about to find out if her hunch was correct.

And if it was correct, and Tony Roselli had actually had the monumental audacity to take a job in their building under some kind of alias, they were on the verge of nailing him at last.

Her chin was tilted at a resolute angle as she nodded back at him. "Let's go."

The very first item on their agenda that morning had been to place a call to Albert Hastings, the owner of 2059 Century City, with a request for access to his human resources files. It had fallen to Remington to finesse the right balance of honesty and ambiguity into the conversation. They wanted Hastings to be concerned enough to let them investigate, but not so alarmed that he telegraphed their moves to Roselli in advance. A complicated task to begin with, it was made even more difficult by a couple of negative factors. Hastings tended to eye Remington Steele Investigations askance, and he was a volatile character at the best of times.

Apparently Remington had caught him on a good day. "I'll have the girls in HR get everything ready," was all Hastings said. "And I expect a report from you when you're done, whether you find what you're looking for or not. Understand?"

The conditions were reasonable. Remington blew out a sigh of relief. "I understand."

And now here they were. Somehow it didn't seem the right setting for a moment that held the potential for so much drama, this bare-bones little office. Then again, they'd each had more than enough drama yesterday. Better to make it all about business, keep the ugliness at a remove, excise the emotion from it.

Therein lay their greatest guarantee of success.

The Steeles bent to the task.

Hastings' work force was relatively small; searching the files didn't take long. Laura simply turned the cover of a folder, and was confronted by a Polaroid of Roselli exactly as she remembered him from two weeks before, hair shorn, bespectacled.

Her gaze lingered on the familiar face with its square jaw and cleft chin. Handsome in an objective sense, she supposed, but rendered grotesque in her sight by what he had done to them.

For a moment she let herself feel it, the full extent of the hatred he engendered in her. Then she deliberately put the emotion aside and flipped the folder upside down so Remington could see it. "Here he is."

It was hard to tell what he was thinking as he gazed down, as she had, at the Polaroid. "Security, just as you suspected. Spendid piece of deduction, Laura."

"Not to mention poetic justice that his little ploy to hurt us turns out to be the very thing that leads us to him."

"And hands Jarvis the solution to Glady Lynch's murder into the bargain. Did you notice the name? 'Ross Eliot.' " He gave a contemptuous snort. "Creative. Not that our Antony's exactly been notorious for his creativity."

But Laura was shaking her head. "It's not stupidity."

"Then what?"

"Arrogance. He's smarter than the rest of us; we're light years from figuring him out. Why take the trouble of inventing a radically different name?"

"Underestimated him again, have I?"

"We both have. Repeatedly. But that's over."

"That's over," he agreed. He studied the file more closely. "He lists his address as 1232 Albany Street, apartment 302. You know where that is?"

"Crummy part of town between Olympic and Pico. You'll know it when you see it."

"Obviously he's taken care to concoct some kind of cover story for his employers' benefit. It says here he claims three kids who live with their mother on his taxes. " He glanced quickly around the room. "You don't suppose they'll let us copy this, do you?"

"Highly unlikely, Mr. Steele."

"Then I suggest you nip down the hall and search out an unattended Xerox machine. I'll keep Hastings' 'girls' occupied until you're through."

On the way back to the agency, the duplicate of Roselli's personnel file safely tucked away, they were uncharacteristically silent. But their unspoken communication was more evident and eloquent than ever in the way she reached for his hand and held it for the rest of the drive.

Their first stop at the office was building security. Eliot was working the early shift that night, the supervisor reported. They'd have to stick around until six o'clock if they wanted to catch him.

It would've been funny if either of them had had the remotest desire to laugh.

"Looks like we have some work ahead of us tonight," she said in a low voice as they rode the elevator to the eleventh floor. "The only way we're going to pull this off is if we get into his apartment and surprise him coming off his shift."

"Unless we turn him over to Jarvis. After all, we have proof that he murdered Gladys Lynch."

"Is that what you want?"

He glanced down at her, and she saw that the quartz-hard look was back in his eyes. ""No, I don't. And neither do you."

They found a pink message slip from Adrian Mihalec waiting for them on Mildred's desk. "It took me a little while to calm him down, he was so worried when you weren't here," she commented. "He's one squirrely guy. Said to tell you that Eitschl contacted him."

Remington turned to Laura, one eyebrow lifted. "See? I told you we were close."

"Who doubted you?" she demanded as they headed towards his office.

Mihalec wasn't frightened, only keyed up with nervous anticipation. "I'm set to meet Jürgen next Saturday afternoon at Griffith Park," he confided over the phone. The Steeles had switched over to speaker mode so they could hold a three-way conversation. "The more people around, the better, he says. You can work with that, right?"

"We can work with it," Laura replied. "But Griffith Park's a big place. Does he have a specific location in mind?"

"The picnic grounds by the Travel Town Museum. Lots of kids, lots of families to blend in with."

"Sounds good," said Laura.

"Whatever came of the robbery that spooked him last time?" Remington asked, slanting an ironic glance at Laura. "Did the police find the culprit?"

"He never said one way or the other."

"Well, you've brought us encouraging news, Adrian. We'll operate according to the plan we came up with originally. Mrs. Steele will--" here Remington's voice caught for a moment, and then he continued smoothly on "—Mrs. Steele will scope out the area in advance, get the lay of the land. If anything's amiss, she'll report it to me before I arrive on the scene. Likely you won't see or recognize either of us once the meeting gets underway. But trust me, we'll be there."

After they'd ended the call, Remington gazed thoughtfully up at Laura. "My guess is we'll have to give him that pep talk a dozen times before next Saturday."

"I'll call and repeat it every hour on the hour if it'll keep him from wimping out on us." Until that point she'd been perched on top of the desk, close to his side. Now she slid to the floor. "I should probably try and get some work done."

And she did, too; she really did try. But her concentration kept failing her. Roselli was overshadowing everything in their lives just now, even the predicament the agency was in, even the advance planning necessary to pull off the Eitschl surveillance successfully. It was all the more galling because provoking this sort of reaction was probably his purpose. She resented the hell out of it, giving him the satisfaction.

In disgust she threw down her pencil and rubbed her forehead to ease the tension. Maybe adhering to their routine wasn't the remedy after all. She didn't have to see Remington to know that he'd already surrendered any fight he might've made to maintain his focus on work.

She was right. He was standing at the window of his office, hands jammed into his trouser pockets, staring out at the street below. She crossed the room and slid her arms around him. "Hey. What do you say we call it a day?"

"Play hooky at--" he consulted his watch and raised his eyebrows "—a quarter past noon?"

"I figured you'd be ready for a break about now."

Irritably he shifted out of her arms. "You don't need to coddle me, or humor me, or whatever it is you're doing."

"Neither one of us is getting anything done around here. Besides, I have a feeling tonight's going to be a long night. Might as well relax while we can."

Ordinarily he would've taken the prospect of an unexpected afternoon off as his cue to put together an impromptu romantic outing. Now he only nodded curtly and sauntered towards the reception area while she went to gather her things.

He remained moody and snappish all the way home; once there he didn't waste any time in flopping onto the sofa in the den to watch _High Noon_. Fine with her. She had her own ways of unwinding and no qualms about indulging without him. Close as she and Remington were, they'd never been joined at the hip when it came to their personal pursuits. Marriage had done nothing to change that. Besides, she wanted his mind as clear as possible for tonight, and movies, he claimed, always relaxed him.

Today the magic worked even more quickly than usual. To her surprise, she heard his footsteps on the stairs well before the film should've ended. He leaned in the doorway of the bathroom, where she was pinning up her hair in preparation for a workout, watching her.

She glanced up at him inquiringly. "Need something?"

His answer was to slip into the room behind her. His hands spanned her waist, pulling her to him; his lips sought the soft hollow where her neck and shoulder joined. "Laura…" he said hoarsely. Just her name. Nothing more.

In the vanity mirror she met his eyes. Their color deepened to near midnight, almost black, as his hands had slipped beneath the edge of the camisole she was wearing and traveled upward to cup her breasts. She leaned against him with a sigh and raised a hand to smooth his hair back over his ear.

But he went no farther than that. Even when she turned in his arms to kiss his mouth, he only lifted her to the edge of the vanity so that their faces were more on a level. It took her a second to register the fact that his fingers were deftly working to unfasten the pins with which she'd just secured her hair, and dropping them one by one to the countertop.

The last pin hit the tile with a faint tinkle. He combed his fingers through her hair, freeing it to fall around her shoulders in loose waves. Then he took a step back to study her with his head on one side.

His beautiful slow smile lit his face.

"I want to draw you like this," he said softly. "Would you pose for me, Laura?"

It was about as warm and intimate a time as any they'd ever spent together, that afternoon. Yet underneath she had the uneasy sense that he was withdrawing into himself. The experience wasn't new, was, in fact, his usual mode of self-defense in intensely emotional situations. But for the first time she began to wonder if it was a sham victory she'd won last night. She'd extracted a promise from him that they'd tackle Roselli together. But was there an element he was reserving for himself? A darker resolve behind the plan they put together over dinner, one in which she had only an incidental part, while he took on a threefold role?

Judge, jury and executioner, was what came to mind.

It was as they were making ready for their departure for Roselli's apartment that she thought she had her answer. She emerged from the bathroom after restraining the hair he'd undone earlier into a businesslike braid…and paused outside the doorway.

He was sitting on the bed, the agency gun and a box of ammo next to him.

In his hands was a black revolver she had never seen before.

He didn't acknowledge her presence until he'd finished loading the gun, closed the cylinder and locked the safety in place. Then he looked up. His face was inscrutable, his eyes as cold as they had been the preceding night when he'd talked about Hollywood and vigilantes, a man's right to execute his own vengeance and his personal mission to prevent Roselli from touching her ever again.

She didn't speak. Neither did he. He simply picked up the agency gun by its barrel and held it out until she took it.

Just after eleven thirty they set off in the Rabbit for the area of Los Angeles known as Pico Union.

Roselli's apartment building was one in a block of crumbling walk-ups whose narrow alleys were heaped with the accumulated debris of hundreds of desperate lives. A gridwork of iron platforms and ladders ran around it, accessible from windows on each floor. Fire escapes. The perfect point of entry for the Steeles. They had already agreed that picking the lock on his door was too risky. What if for some reason he'd blown off his job tonight and was home? Did they really want to chance a confrontation in which he would have the upper hand from the beginning? And even if he weren't there, he was too savvy not to notice pick marks from a mile away, should Remington leave any.

They cruised past the building slowly, scrutinizing the third floor. Lamps burned from windows on the north and west sides. The others were unlit. Difficult to tell from here which were Roselli's; they would need to get inside for a glimpse of the layout.

Minimizing the risk that Roselli would spot the Rabbit when he returned, they parked a couple of blocks west of Albany Street and headed back on foot. Not an appealing option, in this dangerous neighborhood. It was an unexpected relief to Laura that for once they were both armed and ready to shoot if they had to.

And beneath the relief was an even greater sense of security: her husband's hand resting time to time on the small of her back, its pressure just perceptible enough to remind her he was there, but never obtrusive, never restrictive.

From behind them came the sound of a car engine, the faint swish of tires on pavement as it slowly approached. Between one thought and the next, Remington had grasped her arm and steered her into the shadow cast by the nearest building. When at last they were able to see the car's markings, they simultaneously expelled the breath they'd been holding.

It was a patrol car. The LAPD.

There was no need to pick the lock on the entrance to Roselli's building. The door yielded at a single turn of the knob, opening onto a cramped, dirty little foyer. Set into the wall on their left was a series of metal drawers that served as mail boxes. On the card that served as a nameplate for apartment 302 was scrawled 'R. Eliot'.

It was handwriting they both remembered, even though it was months since they'd seen it in a note delivered with a bottle of wine to their table at London's L'Alouette.

Apartment 302 was at the rear of the building, they discovered. It took only a matter of moments to pick out the appropriate fire escape and scale it, to jimmy the window, to climb over the sill. Remington was careful to leave an opening wide enough to admit their hands again if it were necessary to make a run for it.

By the beams of their flashlights they appraised the space they were in: a living room, small, lacking even the luxury of carpet, painfully neat, a minimum of furniture in various stages of disrepair, the adjoining kitchenette outfitted with chipped enamel appliances and a dripping tap. "Whatever he hopes to accomplish by stalking us, he must be really committed to it," Laura remarked in a whisper.

"What makes you say that?"

"Why else would he live in a place like this?"

"Excellent point."

They began their explorations. In a corner squatted a three drawer file cabinet with a flimsy lock; she breached it within seconds. Remington, in the meantime, was rapidly opening and closing the drawers of a desk. "See here, Mrs. Steele. The source of those nasty photographs."

In his gloved hand he held a rectangular, silver camera small enough to fit in his palm. "A Minox LX, to be precise. Very popular in the espionage trade."

"How would you know?"

"_On Her Majesty's Secret Service_, United Artists, 1969.George Lazenby's only outing as James Bond. He uses a camera very like it."

She watched as he tucked it into his pocket. It was illegal, of course, what he was doing; he knew it as well as she did. Beyond simple theft, it was a removal of evidence from what might turn out to be a police investigation, if all went according to plan. But insight told her that there was more driving him than the desire to one-up the police.

Without comment she let it pass and went on searching the cabinet drawer by drawer. There wasn't time for more than a cursory glance at the papers it contained; basically she was watching for her name, or Remington's, or Glady's Lynch's. But a certain repetition began to strike her as odd. "We may be onto something. Seems he's been using a second alias, after all. I'm finding a lot of letters addressed to Mr. Niemand." She was pronouncing it 'nymand'.

Swiftly he turned to her. "Say that again?"

She obliged.

"Spell it." He was shaking his head before she even finished. "Not 'nymand'. 'Neemahnd'. Mr. Niemand. That's what he's calling himself?"

"You've heard it before?"

"It's German for 'nobody'."

The fine hairs at the back of her neck were standing on end. She and Remington exchanged a long look.

Nothing of any significance turned up in either the bedroom or bathroom. Evidently Roselli—or whoever he really was—was taking extra care to destroy any trace of his activities. Finally she rose to her feet, dusting her hands in the process. "Dead end. What time is it?"

"Twenty past one, or thereabouts."

"What now?"

"We wait."

Silence fell. Remington had taken a position near the window through which they'd entered, overlooking the side alley. After a while she joined him. Once in the darkness he captured her hand, squeezed and held it. She peered at him, trying to read his expression, but he didn't shift his gaze from the alley.

There were a couple of false alarms, the main entrance door slamming, footsteps tramping towards the staircase. The noise was clearly audible through the apartment's thin walls. On each occasion they stiffened, alert, ready to spring for the spots from which they would cover the door. But the sounds tapered off and eventually died away.

The third time, it seemed, was the charm. The treads of the staircase creaked as someone heavy began to climb them. The first floor landing. The second floor landing. The turn at the third floor, The squeak of the hallway's floorboards.

A key scraped in the lock; the door swung inward. On a table a few feet to the left of it, light bloomed from an ugly lamp. A ring of keys jangled as they landed on the table.

For the second time in two weeks, Laura's eyes locked with those of Tony Roselli.

She stood directly opposite the door, pistol raised. Part of her noted with distant satisfaction that he was indeed garbed in a security uniform. Behind the door, out of Roselli's line of sight, Remington was poised and watching.

Roselli's hand dropped from the electrical switch he'd just flicked on. Not another muscle of his face moved as he cut his eyes right and left. Searching for Remington? For an escape route? Both?

She jerked her head at him. "Come on in, Tony. Or I'll drop you where you stand."

For a beat he eyed the gun, calculating the extent of her threat and its validity. Deliberately she pulled back the hammer, her level gaze never once leaving him. "Now," she commanded.

He took a step towards her. Then he took another, a challenge.

Just far enough to unleash an explosion of motion behind him: Remington, slamming the door shut, grabbing Roselli by the collar and spinning him around to smash him, head first, against the wall. "Good to see you again, mate," Remington said.

Whatever Roselli replied, it was lost as Remington jerked him back and slammed him forward again. "A signal pleasure, indeed." Jerk. Slam. Roselli was twisting violently under his hands. Futile. Nothing could unloose the vise that was Remington's grip. "Can't exactly say I've missed you. Thought we'd seen the last of you in London." Jerk. Blood was beginning to trickle from Roselli's nose. Slam. Roselli's face hit the wall hard. "But slimy bastards like you have a way of turning up again, eh?" Jerk. Remington' fist caught Roselli in the gut, once, twice. Slam, his face against the wall. The accent was thickening by now; Laura could see the sweat gleaming on her husband's brow. "Skulking in the shadows. Hitting women, strangling them…" Jerk. A blow to the kidneys, then another. Slam. "What d'you suppose would happen if someone served you the same, eh? Think the police would care? Eh? Eh, Antony? Eh? What's that you say? Speak to me, now, I can't hear you--"

Roselli, through spasmodic gasps and bubbling blood, his cockiness undiminished: "--Guess you got my package."

A final tremendous shove into the wall, and Remington was on him, face red and contorted into a snarl, shoving the pistol barrel just under Roselli's ear. "You tell me, eh, you tell me, tell me why I shouldn't do it now, right now, you--" And a string of curses, language Laura had never before heard him use, poured from between her husband's clenched teeth.

Roselli's voice was running beneath them, a soft monotone, mocking; she had to circle closer to catch his words. "--How'd you like the picture of Laura, Steele? You got the best one of the bunch, but there's plenty left over for me. Didn't she look pretty? She _is_ pretty. Felt good, too. Nice to have the chance to appreciate her close up for change--"

Bile was flooding Laura's throat. Remington's left hand tightened convulsively on Roselli's collar; his right hand, holding the Colt, seemed to shake for a moment.

"--Loved those shorts she had on. She's got beautiful legs. Beautiful hair. Bet you love it, running your hands through it every night. I know I did--"

She forced the bile back, shouted, trying to drown out the monotone, "Stop it! Don't! Remington, don't! He's baiting you, don't fall for it, don't listen to him--!"

"--even had my hands around her throat a couple times. Before I hit her and after. Would've been easy enough either way, just to squeeze, and squeeze, and squeeze…"

What happened in the next instant, she never knew. She only heard the hoarse cry of fury that burst from Remington's throat; not only was Roselli free, but lunging for her, leading with his left shoulder, his left arm sweeping wide and forcefully, knocking her to the floor. A crash, a tinkle of glass, the room plunged into darkness, the door thrown open, feet stumbling unsteadily toward the stairs.

Remington had dived to the floor and was fumbling for her. "Laura?"

She'd suffered some bumps and bruises, nothing she couldn't handle. "Fire escape," she snapped as he lifted her to her feet. "Go!"

Mindful of Roselli's head start, they swung down to the ground as quickly as they could. Racing around the corner to the front of the apartment house, they were rewarded by a glimpse of their quarry heading into the mouth of the next alley but one. As far as they could tell, he hadn't seen them.

"Back way, back way, come on." Remington was hustling her in the direction from which they'd just come.

"We'll lose him!" she hissed.

"He's in no shape to run after the hiding I've given him. Trust me, what he wants now is a place to lick his wounds."

Scouting the alley from its opposite end, they found he was only half right. Roselli wasn't running…but he was on the move, hunkered close to wall of the apartment building on the north side, swiftly shuffling crabwise from one pool of shadow to the next.

The Steeles melted against the wall on the south side. There was cover immediately to hand, a large construction dumpster, a stack of wooden pallets. They wove between them and then took places at a little remove from one another, Remington closer to Roselli, Laura to the street from which they'd just entered.

They crouched, waiting.

Roselli, oblivious, came on.

Motion to the left of Laura. Remington's thumb, stealthily pulling back the safety on his pistol. That metallic scrape, a sound unlike any other.

Roselli a few yards away now.

It was too risky to whisper, but she gestured violently, fighting for her husband's attention. He kept his face resolutely turned away. Ignoring her?

Or so focused on the outcome of his vendetta that he was no longer aware she was there?

The need for stillness had evaporated; Roselli was within range. Unfolding his long body from his hiding place, Remington stood. A few steps carried him into his enemy's path.

He was blocking her vision, so she missed Roselli's reaction. As she scrambled to her feet, she heard Remington, in a voice unlike his own: "Get up."

Roselli had straightened. She glimpsed his face at last. No fear, despite his puffed lips, his bloody nose, only an ugly sneer. He'd worn it before, in the hallway at Ashford Castle, on the street outside L'Allouette, a few minutes ago in his apartment.

"C'mon, Steele," he jeered. "What're you waiting for? C'mon, if you got the balls for it."

Remington response was to cock the hammer, just as she had done in the apartment. His face, still in profile to her, was a rigid mask; the hand that held the pistol was rock steady.

In that instant, the certainty took root deep in her gut that he was going to pull the trigger.

She couldn't have explained why she knew. But she was as certain of it as she was that she loved him.

Without a single idea in her head as to what she would do afterward, she sprang to his side.

The moment disintegrated in a blaze of white light.

Its origin was behind them. The Steeles whipped toward it, shading their eyes.

An amplified voice barked from the police cruiser, "Freeze! Hands in the air!"

After that, pandemonium.

Two armed patrolmen spilled from the driver's and passenger's sides, confiscated the Steeles' weapons, prodded them roughly towards the car, made them bend over the hood with arms and legs spread, frisked them. The cops shut down all accusations about Roselli before the Steeles could utter them; no references to Remington Steele or Lieutenant Jarvis or Lieutenant Benjamin or Gladys Lynch made the least impression. The Steeles were suspected felons, apprehended in the act of accosting a bruised, bloodied man in uniform at gunpoint. The cops were playing it by the book.

None of them noticed in the midst of it that Roselli—the supposed victim of the scenario--was stealthily retreating until his running feet scrabbled on the pavement.

It was Remington who remarked it, stark disbelief etched on his face. "God almighty, he's gotten away! You've let him go!"

The patrolman who was bundling him into the back seat of the cruiser replied, "Not your concern, pal. Shut your trap and keep it shut."

As the car carried them towards the downtown station house, it wasn't lost on Laura that the cop's injunction to silence was completely unnecessary. Remington wouldn't have spoken if he could have.

Over the duration of the drive, he never once looked up.

* * *

It was mid-morning when the Steeles finally parked the Rabbit in its space in their garage, beside the Auburn, and climbed wearily out of it.

At least now they had an inkling of the clout the name Remington Steele carried in law enforcement circles. On arrival at the station house, they'd been detained in separate interrogation rooms as a matter of course, and questioned by detectives they didn't recognize. But once they were allowed to tell the full story—at least the edited version--the level of respect they were accorded shot into the stratosphere. There was no question of booking them, let alone fingerprints or mug shots. They were even offered the amenity of cups of bad LAPD coffee.

Two hours before he was due to come on for his normal shift, they were ushered together into Lieutenant Jarvis' office. "Tell me about this guy Roselli," he said without preamble as they took seats opposite him. "You think he murdered Gladys Lynch?

"He never admitted it in so many words," Remington replied. "But we suspect he did, yes."

"Tell me what you know," repeated Jarvis.

The Steeles gave him the same version they had to their interrogators, the receipt of Roselli's package, their suspicions about his masquerade and how they'd verified them, but omitting the events at Roselli's apartment.

Jarvis leaned forward in his chair. "Those pictures, you still have them?"

"We'll authorize Mildred to release them to you right away," said Laura.

"There's something else you probably ought to know," Remington added. "We think he's the one who tipped off the press that there was a break-in at the agency. We've hired a publicist to counter the story with one of our own."

"What kind of story?" demanded Jarvis.

Before they could enlighten him, his phone rang. He listened to the caller mostly in silence, his glance flickering over the Steeles. Experience had taught them that his poker face was very nearly impeccable; he hid a lot under his 'Huck Finn' routine. But he couldn't always control his posture, and the slump of his shoulders told the Steele the news wasn't good.

Their intuition was on the money. "We sent a couple cars back to Pico Union about an hour ago," Jarvis said when he'd disconnected from the call. "Roselli's apartment's cleaned out, and there's been no sign of him."

The oath slipped out before Remington could check it. "The bloody hell--!"

"Remington banged him up pretty badly when he tried to escape, Lieutenant. He can't have gotten far!" Laura exclaimed.

"Maybe not, Mrs. Steele. But we don't know that he's on foot. It's logical to assume he has a car, and more than three hours' start on us." He spread his hands. "What can I say? I'm not proud of it, but it happens."

Metal scraped on linoleum as Remington abruptly shoved his chair back. He took a furious turn around the room. "We had him, Jarvis! Right in our sights! Those—those--" This time he bit back the epithet before he committed the faux pas of applying it to Jarvis' men. "They let him get away!"

"If you're talking about Officers Kurtz and Dagonet, they were doing their jobs."

"Hauling us down here as if we're common criminals! Never allowing us a chance to share information!"

A flush had risen on Jarvis' boyish face. "Mr. Steele, with all due respect? There's a saying where I come from. 'Pot? Kettle here. You're black'."

Remington snorted. "Not helpful, Lieutenant," said Laura.

"No, but accurate. We all know sharing information should've started this morning. And who should've been doing the sharing."

The accusation hit the mark. Remington arrested in his pacing; Laura looked back at Jarvis in discomfiture. "We thought we had it handled."

"Gee, really? I never would've guessed," said Jarvis. "You know, Mrs. Steele, I'm sorry this guy hurt you. And I hate like hell that he slipped through our fingers. But if you're passing blame around, be sure and suck up your fair share. Maybe it'll make you think twice next time you try bringing in a murder suspect by yourselves."

Laura subsided in her chair. Remington fell silent.

And didn't speak again until they were home.

He hung back while she unlocked the door that led from the garage to the house. "I'd like to walk, I think. If you don't mind."

Her gaze traveled over it, his beloved face, taking stock of the lines and shadows in it, how pale he was, his eyes dull, robbed of their customary twinkle. "Want some company?"

She sensed a distinct hesitation before he nodded and held out his hand.

It was odd, strolling through their neighborhood at this hour. Normally they were immersed in business by now, bodies and minds revved up to the frenetic pace on which they both thrived professionally. Though it was so different, this ordered peace, coming as it did on the heels of last night's suspense and violence and adrenaline overload, was like a balm.

She couldn't tell if Remington was preparing himself to tackle whatever was weighing on him just now, or if he was waiting for her to start. Not that it mattered either way. So much had happened, they would be at it for weeks, trying to process it all. For once she wouldn't have minded putting off discussion, at least until they'd had some sleep.

Apparently he didn't agree. He prefaced his opening comment with a long sigh. "So…Antony runs away to fight again another day."

"And disappears without a trace. I can't say I'm surprised."

"Aren't you?"

"He seems to have a knack for extracting himself from tight situations. It's almost spooky." Gooseflesh had pricked up on her arms, under the sleeves of her jumpsuit, and she rubbed them absently. "Mr. Niemand."

"He was right, you know. Jarvis. We should've handed the case over to him. As soon as we figured out what Antony had done, and how and where he was hiding, we should've." He glanced down at her. "You were right, too."

"Not an uncommon occurrence. Care to elaborate?"

"I _have_ been going off half-cocked. Emotion clouding my judgment. Feelings—how did you put it? Ah, yes. Overpowering my objectivity. If I'd been thinking straight, Antony'd be in jail right now. As it is…" He trailed off.

"As it is?" she prompted gently.

"Well. As it is…if anything ever--happens--to you again, I'll have only myself to blame."

"A little extreme, don't you think?" She took his hand again.

He shrugged, and was silent.

They'd walked on for an interval without speaking when he suddenly said, "What would he have done in this situation, your Remington Steele?"

A question out of left field. "My Remington Steele?"

"The paragon of virtue. The repository of truth, justice and right. What would he have done, if he'd had Roselli at his mercy last night?"

"You're my Remington Steele. Since you are, maybe you need to ask yourself that question."

"I'd have killed him, Laura, if I could." Eyes narrowed, he gazed off into the distance. "I wish I had."

"I wish he was dead, too."

"Not the same thing."

"I know."

They had turned a corner and were passing the side of someone's garage when he caught her by the wrist and pulled her over to it. "Let's talk a moment."

She raised her brows. "I thought we were talking."

He shook his head impatiently. "Tell me something…and be honest. If I'd shot him tonight, would you have given me up? I mean…would I have lost you?"

She didn't have to think twice, looked him straight in the eye. "No. You wouldn't."

"Manslaughter, second degree murder? Me in jail, you in disgrace, Remington Steele revealed as a fraud, our license gone?

"Mitigating circumstances, Mr. Steele. He's been playing cat-and-mouse with us for months. He's a murderer who's threatened your wife. And he was purposely goading you tonight."

"If he hadn't, though. If I'd done it in cold blood as soon as he'd walked through that door."

"You wouldn't have."

"How do you know?"

"Because you couldn't. You're not capable of it." Slowly she raised a hand to his cheek; tenderly she caressed it. "Because you're my Remington Steele."

"Am I?" he whispered.

"My paragon of virtue, justice and right."

A faint smile was playing around his mouth as he wrapped his arms around her. "And truth?" he suggested.

"Still working on it. But we've come a long way. Haven't we?"

"Far enough to be able to say this in broad daylight, and not backtrack afterwards." He bent so he could rest his forehead against hers. "No one will ever hurt you again the way he did. I'll see to it. I'd lay down my life to protect you, Laura."

She blinked against a sudden rush of tears; her voice when she answered was husky. "I know you would. I know."

"You'll let it stand? And not ask me to take it back?"

"I'll let it stand."

"Good." Another long sigh slipped from him. "Now let's go home and get some sleep."

TO BE CONTINUED


	10. Chapter 10

Chapter 10

The living room at Windsor Square was as festive as Laura could make it on this early October evening.

The room was imbued now with Art Deco elegance and unrecognizable as the overstuffed nest where Patsy Vance had secluded herself for thirty years. Tonight, diffused light from two strategically positioned torchières, as well as the candles Laura had grouped on every horizontal service, including her piano, had multiplied the romance factor to the _nth_ power. _Concert by the Sea _played softly in the background; light gleamed on the neck of the bottle of Veuve Clicquot chilling in its silver bucket.

She was waiting for Remington to come home from a black tie fundraiser where he was serving as the opening speaker. Stacie Adamski had engineered the gig for him as part of her continuing strategy to put the Remington Steele brand back on track. His plan was to duck out after the photo ops, skipping the dinner and silent auction. The freshly refurbished Bedard's was the ultimate destination for tonight. The former after-hours gambling establishment had been transformed into a supper club by its new owners, and the Steeles had late reservations.

They also had a lot to celebrate.

After the downward spiral initiated by Roselli's tip to the media, the agency was beginning to rebound. That they owed this in no small part to Adamski's dedicated work, the Steeles never forgot for a second. The combination of her doggedness and her deep Rolodex of contacts had gained first-tier placement for a spate of stories that had gone a long way towards unmasking Rosell. They had also effectively dispelled the aura of incompetence that had been hanging over the agency like a gray fog. There was a world of difference between succumbing to a break-in by a petty thief and being targeted for revenge by a high-level spy. Adamski had worked it to the hilt. She was worth every penny they were paying her and more besides, Remington had declared.

So far the hidden bombshell at the center of the tale—the origins of Remington Steele, the name and the man—hadn't been detonated. Reporters had accepted the same explanation of Remington's and Daniel's relationship that had satisfied Remington's family, the early divorce, Remington raised by his mother without contact with his father, their reunion when Remington was an adolescent. Nor had any questions arisen from the Immigration and Naturalization Service. It seemed Laura's gamble had paid off brilliantly.

And, even as the first wave of stories was subsiding, a second had broken behind it: the successful prosecution of the Demerest case.

This time the surveillance operation had run as smoothly as clockwork. They'd mixed it up a bit in terms of their false identities, narrowing as far as possible the odds that someone would recognize them from their recent photos in the paper. Remington had combed powder into his hair to whiten it and added a pair of spectacles; with a camera in one hand and a cane in the other, he was the very image of an elderly English birdwatcher. "Absolutely fitting for the second cousin thrice removed, or whatever I am, to John Burleigh Chalmers, distinguished naturalist, author and illustrator of _The_ _Songbirds of Rural England: A Field Guide_," he'd explained. "In fact, I believe I'll use this disguise whenever I need to shoot photographs undercover." He had grinned cheekily as he took in Laura's costume. "You, my love, look—well, how should I say it? Not quite up to your usual standard of grooming?"

She'd glared at him. She was wearing the headband, poncho and frayed jeans that she'd last unearthed for cracking Phil Lydon's computer at the Perennial Corporation about a year ago. It was never especially pleasant, going out in public with the uncombed hair and unwashed face this get-up required. But a hippy with a pair of headphones was as unlikely to excite suspicion as an amateur ornithologist with a camera, so she put up with it. Part of her even wished that Jim Demerest was there to admire their ingenuity again.

"Watch it, Gramps," was her crisp reply. "I'm not quite up to my usual standard of courtesy, either, which means I'm stealing your cane if you keep this up."

Though both were having trouble burying the memory of what happened the last time they'd attempted to catch Eitschl, neither had alluded to it.

Contrary to their expectations, Adrian Mihalec hadn't chickened out on them at the last minute. He'd needed almost constant reassurance to bring him to this point--Remington had been correct on that score—but in the end, his confidence in them had held firm. He was on time and in position when Laura arrived at Griffith Park.

"He's picked out a spot on the outer fringes of the picnic area, so you should have a good view of them when Eitschl joins him," she'd reported to Remington from her mobile phone. "There's a tree not far away, maybe five yards. I'll sit under it like I'm meditating. They won't even notice me. As soon as you get here, we can get this show on the road."

"On my way," he had replied. Then, in an undertone almost too low for her to hear: "Be careful, me darlin'."

Her response, equally low: "You, too, Mr. Steele."

Eitschl, a slender, auburn-haired man in beautifully cut khaki trousers and a polo shirt, had arrived on the scene perhaps fifteen minutes after Remington did. In his carefully dressed informality he'd seemed to fit better, to look more at home, among the crowd of picnickers than rumpled, bearded little Mihalec. After purchasing a couple of sodas from a concession stand and handing one to his subordinate, he'd leaned his forearms on the table and proceeded to engage Mihalec in conversation…for all the world like a couple of acquaintances catching up at leisure on a sunny fall afternoon.

The sheaf of papers he produced might merely have been real estate comps, or flyers to publicize a rotary club event, for all that a casual onlooker would have been able to tell.

Might have been, but were not.

The reception on Laura's recorder was perfect.

So were the zoom lens and focus on Remington's camera.

At the end of half an hour, they had an incendiary store of evidence, electronically preserved.

On the following Tuesday came a telephone call from Jim Demerest. "Mrs. Steele? I wanted you and Mr. Steele to be the first to know. The broker's association meeting proceeded according to plan. The SEC filed charges against Jürgen, and the FBI took him into custody about an hour ago."

The press had begun to report the story the following day. And commendations had been flowing to Remington Steele Investigations ever since.

The only dark cloud on an otherwise clear horizon was the fact that Tony Roselli, with their gun, had vanished without a trace once again.

Lieutenant Jarvis had remained remarkably sanguine about the attention on Roselli generated by Stacie Adamski's story. Not that it would have made much difference one way or the other. Roselli's trail went ice cold as soon as he had departed Pico Union. Since then the jurisdiction for the murder investigation had been expanded, kicked upstairs to the interstate and federal level; Gladys Lynch had been an officer in a critical governmental agency, after all. But the increased manpower and resources had produced no results. Uncanny and spooky, was how the Steeles had separately characterized their enemy. It was disconcerting to realize that the man who called himself Mr. Niemand was just as big an enigma to professionals who tracked that sort of person for a living.

So it didn't do to drop their guard, not for an instant. Remington and Laura had learned that bitter lesson well.

Too well, Laura thought. For there was frequently a new look in her husband's eyes when she surprised his gaze on her: brooding, apprehensive. Recalling the morning he'd found her unconscious in her office? His imagination embroidering the scene with the twisted details Roselli had been only too happy to supply? Of that she was certain. And blaming himself for the fact that, with Roselli at large, she might still be at risk? She could only guess. After the morning at the police station, he'd never spoken openly about it again and she hadn't cared to probe any further. There were some issues, she was discovering, where even their love couldn't lighten the personal darkness he carried deep inside. The battle was one he'd have to fight and win--or lose--alone.

The day after their run-in with Roselli, they'd opened the camera Remington had confiscated from the apartment. There was no film in it. Later she'd found it discarded in the trash, smashed in dozens of pieces, beyond repair.

Privately she was relieved that it was the only thing he'd destroyed. She'd been totally honest when she'd confided to him that she wished Roselli was dead. But dead by her husband's hand? Not in a million years. To her surprise it wasn't an ethical reaction, a protest against the intrinsic wrong of taking a human life. It mattered to her only for Remington's sake. As deeply as Roselli's continued existence disturbed Remington, the stain of murder on his conscience would've been far worse. She wasn't sure he could've borne up under the guilt.

And she was grateful for her own sake that he'd been prevented from going through with it. If he'd shot Roselli, they would've taken Remington away from her. They might even have locked him up for good.

That, quite simply, was unacceptable to her.

Even when he was at his worst, which was the case when he arrived shortly after eight o'clock, muttering darkly about the bloody parking attendant and the blasted Beverly Hills traffic. But his eyes lit up at the sight of her in the rose-coral, thirties-inspired gown she'd worn the night they got engaged. "Why, Mrs. Steele," he breathed. "A special occasion I'm not aware of?"

"If you're asking because of the dress, from what I hear of Bedard's, it'll be totally appropriate. But there _is_ a special occasion. Don't tell me you've forgotten."

It was hard to suppress a smile as she watched his gaze travel the living room, puzzled, a little wary. "Obviously it's not the first anniversary of our first wedding," he commented.

"Obviously not."

"Nor yet our second wedding. Or your birthday, since we've just celebrated it." They had indeed, with a small party that included Mildred and Bumpers and the five Pipers.

"Try again."

"If it's the date when I first landed in your life, we're several weeks too late. Assuming you consider it worth commemorating."

"It's had its moments," she said lightly. "Give up?" When he signaled that he had, she moved into his arms and lifted her face to his. "Ashford Castle. Five months ago tonight."

His smile was incandescent. "Cause for celebration, indeed." And he accepted her unspoken invitation to kiss her.

Once he'd uncorked the champagne and poured it, they touched their glasses together. "To an eventful five months," she suggested.

"A challenging five months," he countered.

"Nothing we couldn't handle. Though I have to admit, I'll feel a lot better once the agency's on a stable footing again."

He gazed at her thoughtfully over the rim of his glass. "It's occurred to me that our recent troubles have been partly of our own making. We've been so busy the past five months, exploring and re-defining our personal relationship--"

"—Not to mention filling in the blanks of your past--"

"—that we've rather had our hand off the tiller at times where the business is concerned, haven't we."

"It has been tempting now and then to let things slide," she conceded. "And we haven't always resisted as hard as we should. But the damage isn't irreversible. We'll just have to work a little harder and smarter for the time being, that's all." She surveyed him with a lifted eyebrow and her lower lip caught beneath her teeth. "Think you can handle it, Mr. Steele?"

"With you all the way, my love. And here's a toast to seal the bargain." He raised his glass again. "To working harder and smarter, balanced with adequate time for play. Think you can handle it, Mrs. Steele?"

"I'm with you all the way—whatever you have in mind."

The music had shifted into a slow passage; putting their glasses aside, he drew her into his arms. For a while they swayed together in a tight circle, holding each other, their lips meeting from time to time in a flurry of light kisses. "What a lovely way to start the evening, Laura," he murmured. "Thank you."

"My pleasure. I like having the chance to romance you for a change. And I thought it might help smooth some of the rough spots. I've been sensing some tension, every now and then."

A neutral opening, one he could take or leave as he wished. Since she expected him to choose the latter, she was surprised when he said after a moment or two, "It's Antony, of course."

"I thought so."

"It doesn't make for peace of mind, does it, knowing what he's capable of…knowing he's waiting for an opportune moment to strike again."

They'd had this conversation several times over the past few weeks, but she was more than willing to cover the ground with him again. "And still with no clear idea why he was rifling our files all that time. Or why he would've murdered Gladys Lynch."

"It's the waiting game he's playing that troubles me most." A pause. "Do you know what nemesis is, Laura?"

"An enemy who's your total opposite, but also similar to you. Like Sherlock Holmes and Moriarty, or Batman and the Joker."

"Partly. It's also an ancient Greek belief in the reckoning of justice. Divine retribution."

"Something your friend Markos taught you?"

He smiled faintly at the accuracy of her memory. "He was a good Orthodox, was Markos. The icons, the feast days, the prayers, he loved it all. Yet the old beliefs were somehow mixed in. There's a power that stalks us, he used to say, spies on all we say and do. And then at the worst possible moment uses it against us to pay us back for our past misdeeds. Nemesis, in other words."

"Sounds like he made a believer out of you."

"It's as good an explanation as any for what my life has been, isn't it? Everything snatched away as soon as I began to care about it?"

"Expecting to be kicked in the teeth at every turn," she said, recalling fragments of old conversations. "Not holding onto anything or anyone too tightly."

By now they had stopped dancing. Neither of them noticed it.

"I've let down my guard," he said. "I thought I'd outrun it at last, you see. But it's found me again, just when I've won the life…the woman…I never thought a man like me could have."

"And you think that's why Tony's in our lives? Divine justice for bad deeds you've done, and he's the messenger?"

"Why else would I be at the mercy of a man I hate more than anyone I've ever known?"

It was the side of him that was pure Celt, the source of the moods that ran through his surface good nature like a single black vein in white marble. She had been right about the dark battle he was waging within himself. "I think you're seeing more than there really is," she said gently. "We can't take his threats lightly, but he's not invincible. Think of the mistake he made when he mailed us the pictures, and how close we came to catching him because of it. Don't invest him with more power than he actually has."

"But he does have power, Laura." The arms around her waist held her even more closely against him. "The worst of it is, I've given it to him."

"You mean because you care for me, and he knows it."

He stirred restlessly at her use of the euphemism. "That's our old way of talking about what we have together. Call it by its right name."

"He knows you love me."

"More than anything on earth, it seems. And it frightens the hell out of me."

An enormous admission on both counts. Even more remarkable was the fact that he hadn't glanced aside after making it, veiling his expression before she saw too much.

Her first thought was to approach it rationally, make him recognize Roselli for what he actually was: capable of enormous evil, yes, relentless, vengeful out of all proportion to whatever slight he thought Remington had dealt him…but not some kind of force of nature.

Then she changed her mind. She would do it at some point, because he needed to hear it. But not tonight. Instead she only said, "Go on."

"Ah, Laura." This time he briefly looked away and sighed. "What more do you want me to say? It's the first I've known of happiness like this. Sometimes I wonder if it would've been better never to have it. If he wins—if he ends it—I don't know what'll become of me afterwards."

"I do. You'd pick yourself up and start over, the way you have dozens of times."

"I couldn't do without you in Menton, and it was only four days. More than that and I'd chuck everything. Run away. Die alone in a Mediterranean villa. Like father, like son, eh?

"Daniel died at Ashford Castle with you at his side."

"He wouldn't have, given the choice."

There was a pause while they looked at each other somberly, knowing nothing was solved, nothing had changed.

"Tell me what I can do to make it better," she said at last. Her eyes were dry, but her voice was throaty with the tears she might have shed if she let herself.

"You can't. But you could hold me."

Wordlessly she stretched up on tiptoe and slipped her arms around his neck—her turn to be the comfort and shelter that he had been for her in the days immediately following Roselli's attack. He bent his head to nuzzle her ear and whisper: "And when we get home from Bedard's, make love with me."

"And I'll indulge you in every subtlety of romance we can imagine," she whispered back.

Sometime later he straightened to his full height. His eyes hadn't regained their twinkle, but there was a smile in them as he gazed down at her.

"Dance with me, Laura," he said.

And they did.

* * *

"…In London, a military funeral was held today for the man who spearheaded the exposure, and subsequent capture, of British intelligence double agent Sterling Fitch. Daniel Chalmers was posthumously knighted--"

Shutting off the videotape recorder with a touch of the remote, Windsor Thomas reclined in the chair in her office at LA Spotlight News.

She didn't have to hear the announcer's words to the end; she already knew them by heart, though the tape she'd been watching had arrived from RTÉ's Dublin studios only a few days prior.

It was quite a coup, getting hold of it in the first place. Mentally she congratulated herself on her success. She and her producer, Meg Halliwell, had made it happen through hours of research, string-pulling and palm-greasing. Pinpointing the origin of the news report was only the beginning. There was also finagling its release from the Irish television network, not to mention obtaining a dub onto half-inch Beta tape in the correct US format and having it delivered covertly to Spotlight News. With admirable foresight, she'd recognized that it might serve as crucial B-roll footage in a future exposé, and she wasn't taking any chances.

All in all, she was satisfied with the results. Nor would the hard work she'd put into the process go to waste. It could only help, having behind-the-scenes contacts in British and Irish television news, when she achieved her ambition of stepping permanently into Tom Brokaw's or Peter Jennings' shoes.

Penetrating the mystery that shrouded the background of LA's preeminent private detective, Remington Steele, might bring her closer to actually wearing the shoes.

Something about Steele's history was off kilter. As soon as she'd assembled the available facts, she'd seen it plainly. Possessed of a beauty queen's face and body though she was—Pawhuska-bred, she'd been first runner-up to Miss Oklamoha, 1979—behind them was a brain as sharply inquisitive, as oriented towards the objective and factual, as Severeid's or Brinkley's. And, her previous humiliation at the hands of Lou Mackler over the Billie Young story notwithstanding, she had an instinct for bull artistry that was accurate ninety nine per cent of the time.

To be perfectly honest, it wasn't only the determination to find out what Steele might be hiding that drover her. Underneath was a definite impulse to play tit for tat. When the Steeles had released the story about their office break-in, they'd shut out Spotlight News completely; she'd heard it secondhand from an Associated Press stringer. And she'd never quite forgiven Steele for his ongoing imperviousness to her sex appeal. The last time she'd been passed over in favor of a feminine rival was when she'd lost the pageant crown to Jill Elmore. She was of the firm belief that payback should literally be a bitch.

She'd already developed a preliminary list of leads she meant to contact as soon as possible. Maybe they could shed some light on the reason why Sir Daniel Chalmers, born in America, a British citizen, had a son who claimed his nationality was Irish. Or how Steele had risen to the position of high-level operative in the CIA when the Department of Defense had no record of either his training or his military service. Or why the CIA would have admitted an Irishman to their ranks in the first place.

Simon Edwards. Alex Edwards. Lillian Dalgleish, née Chalmers.

Windsor was looking forward to speaking to all of them.

* * *

"Mr. Steele! Mr. Steele! Wait!"

In the lobby of the Wilton Civic Auditorium, a tall, dark-haired man paused at the sound of his name. He turned and scanned the space with piercing blue eyes until he caught sight of the young woman pushing through the lingering crowds towards him.

His pursuer was panting when she reached him. "Elaine Casselas," she managed between gasps, holding out her hand. He shook it with an air of gentle amusement as she went on, "I just wanted to tell you in person, your talk was fantastic."

"It's gratifying to hear. Thanks very much. Are you in law enforcement? I wouldn't have thought--"

"Quinnipac University, third year. I'm going on to law school if I get accepted. I know this program was supposed to be for professionals, but when Professor Gilles announced it in class, I just had to come."

"Professor Gilles?"

"My Perspectives on Violence course. He knows a lot about your work and thought it would be really valuable if we could get some insight from a real, working private detective."

"Ah. A group of you attended, did you?"

"Well, no." She blushed. "Everybody was busy. I came by myself."

His amusement had deepened into a smile. "Then I'm all the more honored you were able to make it."

Looking up at him, she felt her face flush even hotter. He was more handsome up close than he'd been on stage, if that was possible, with those long-lashed blue eyes and that cleft chin. The expertly tailored navy suit and Italian loafers he was wearing fairly shouted class and money. She wondered fleetingly about some marks on his nose and chin that looked like they might be only recently healed. Probably he'd busted up a drug ring, or had a fight with the local mafia or something. Private detectives were always getting roughed up. She'd seen it on television.

During her momentary daydream she'd missed the beginning of his sentence. "---part you found most interesting," he was saying.

"Oh." She blinked. "I'm sorry, could you repeat that?"

"I said, I wonder if you'd be willing to share which part of the speech you found most interesting. Or helpful, or both."

"That's easy." She opened the spiral notebook she'd tucked into her purse. "It was the section on the three types of the violent criminal mind. Major Descoines—am I saying that right?"

"Perfect."

"Norman Keyes, and Tony Roselli." Closing the book, she added, "I think it's fascinating, the way you use real life examples from your cases like that. Were they all really as devious and brilliant as you described them?"

"Even more so, if you can believe it."

"Wow."

There didn't seem to be more to talk about after that, and anyway, he was taking her hand again. "Well—Elaine, was it? It was lovely to have met you. Perhaps our paths will cross again next time I'm in Connecticut. In the meantime, best of luck with your studies."

As he turned away, she noticed the wisps of hair that curled around the base of his neck, over his collar. He really was the most adorable man. Suddenly she recalled a question she'd meant to ask him; once more she called his name. "Mr. Steele?"

"Yes?"

"I was wondering—your biography in the proceedings says you're Irish."

"Quite correct." And he raised his eyebrows as if at a lapse in her manners.

"It's just that you sound almost like an American," she said apologetically. "I can't hear even a trace of accent."

"I've been long enough in this country that I've schooled myself to suppress it. Trust me, though, there are times when my brogue is thick enough to cut with a knife."

For the final time, he flashed that smile at her.

"Good day, Elaine."

FINIS

Next installment: Steele Inseperable Prequel

"Requiem in Steele Major"


End file.
